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1 



THE 



RISE OF THE OLD DISSENT, 



EXEMPLIFIED IN 



THE LIFE 



OLIVER KEY WOOD, 

ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN 
CONGREGATIONS IN THE COUNTY OF YORK. 



1630—1702, 



BY 

THE REV. JOSEPH HUNTER, 



LONDON: 

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 
1842. % 



PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR, 
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. 



PREFACE. 



Mr. heywood was one of those persons whose lives 
are the connecting links of early Puritanism and modern 
Dissent. He was born in the reign of King Charles the 
First ; studied at Cambridge when the University had 
been newly reformed by the parliamentary commission- 
ers ; was ordained a minister by a Presbyterian classis 
in the time of the Commonwealth ; became the pastor 
of a little rural flock ; was separated from them by the 
operation of the Act of Uniformity ; refused to desist 
from the exercise of his ministry when he was so re- 
moved, and suffered considerable inconvenience in con- 
sequence ; became pastor of a congregation of Non- 
Conforming persons when the Act of Toleration allowed 
of the formation of such societies ; and having lived in 
peace for thirteen years under the protection of that Act, 
died in 1702, having seen several congregations besides 
his own raised in a great measure by his efforts. 

Such is the outline of his life, and it will be found in 
the following pages to be filled up with a minuteness 
which will require, I fear, some indulgence on the part 
of the reader to be excused ; but having such authentic 
materials, I was unwilling to lose the opportunity of 
presenting in detail the facts which made up the expe- 
rience of one of those men who, by the course which 
they took at a very critical period in the history of the 

a 2 



PREFACE. 



Reformed Church of England, were the instruments in 
the hands of Providence of introducing a new element 
into English society, and created influences that have 
had the most important effects on the characters and 
fortunes of a large portion of the population of England ; 
and this the rather as I am not acquainted with any 
work in which the life of one of these persons is so fully 
described, few of those ministers having left such ample 
materials for the purpose as were left by Mr. Heywood. 
I was desirous also of preserving the names of many 
persons who acted with him in the severe course of self- 
appointed duty in which he trod, or were more espe- 
cially wrought upon by his ministry ; and also of pre- 
senting to the hand of any one who may hereafter 
undertake to write of the ecclesiastical history of the 
diocese of York, materials which he would in vain seek 
in any other quarter. 

The extracts from these remains, illustrative of the 
general manners and opinions of the time, are not so 
numerous as to require apology. 

Though this work is the life of Mr. Heywood, it will 
at once be perceived that it must be to a great extent a 
view of the public part of the lives of numerous mini- 
sters who took the same course which he did when the 
Act of Uniformity prescribed terms of ministerial com- 
munion with the Church which they thought unreason- 
able and unscriptural ; so that while relating only what 
was done by Mr. Heywood in the parts of the county of 
York in which he resided, we are in fact relating what 
was doing in many other parts of the kingdom ; I might 
rather say, in every diocese and every county of the 
realm. 



PREFACE. 



V 



I write in the character neither of the apologist and 
defender, nor of the impugner and opponent of men on 
whom it is impossible to look without a considerable 
degree of respect, but as the historian of the course they 
took, and aiming in an impartial spirit to give a just 
view of their determinations in the several critical periods 
of their lives. 

It remains that I describe the materials which have 
been used in the preparation of this work. 

The age of Mr. Heywood was peculiarly the age of 
diaries. There are many existing of his period ; there 
are few earlier, and there are few later. They were part 
of the religious exercise of the devout of those days. 
One head of the advice given to him by his father when 
he entered the University was to keep a written record 
of his private meditations. Mr. Ambrose, a Puritan 
minister of Lancashire, Mr. Heywood's native county, 
had earnestly recommended the keeping of diaries as 
eminently serviceable to those who made it a principal 
object of their lives to establish themselves in all the 
thoughts and ways of piety ; and in the book which he 
entitled Media, he gives a specimen of what, in his 
opinion, such diaries ought to be in extracts from his 
own. With such specimens before us we cannot but 
lament that the carelessness of later times should have 
suffered such a curious and valuable document to perish, 
for perished it is to be feared it is. There is a pathos and 
beauty in some of the passages which he has selected for 
publication, as when he speaks of his occasional retire- 
ments to his hut in " the sweet silent woods of Wid- 
dicre," which make one wish for more ; and there is 
good historical information in what he relates of events 



iv 



PREFACE. 



Reformed Church of England, were the instruments in 
the hands of Providence of introducing a new element 
into English society, and created influences that have 
had the most important effects on the characters and 
fortunes of a large portion of the population of England ; 
and this the rather as I am not acquainted with any 
work in which the life of one of these persons is so fully 
described, few of those ministers having left such ample 
materials for the purpose as were left by Mr. Heywood. 
I was desirous also of preserving the names of many 
persons who acted with him in the severe course of self- 
appointed duty in which he trod, or were more espe- 
cially wrought upon by his ministry ; and also of pre- 
senting to the hand of any one who may hereafter 
undertake to write of the ecclesiastical history of the 
diocese of York, materials which he would in vain seek 
in any other quarter. 

The extracts from these remains, illustrative of the 
general manners and opinions of the time, are not so 
numerous as to require apology. 

Though this work is the life of Mr. Heywood, it will 
at once be perceived that it must be to a great extent a 
view of the public part of the lives of numerous mini- 
sters who took the same course which he did when the 
Act of Uniformity prescribed terms of ministerial com- 
munion with the Church which they thought unreason- 
able and unscriptural ; so that while relating only what 
was done by Mr. Heywood in the parts of the county of 
York in which he resided, we are in fact relating what 
was doing in many other parts of the kingdom ; I might 
rather say, in every diocese and every county of the 
realm. 



PREFACE. 



V 



I write in the character neither of the apologist and 
defender, nor of the impugner and opponent of men on 
whom it is impossible to look without a considerable 
degree of respect, but as the historian of the course they 
took, and aiming in an impartial spirit to give a just 
view of their determinations in the several critical periods 
of their lives. 

It remains that I describe the materials which have 
been used in the preparation of this work. 

The age of Mr. Heywood was peculiarly the age of 
diaries. There are many existing of his period ; there 
are few earlier, and there are few later. They were part 
of the religious exercise of the devout of those days. 
One head of the advice given to him by his father when 
he entered the University was to keep a written record 
of his private meditations. Mr. Ambrose, a Puritan 
minister of Lancashire, Mr. Heywood's native county, 
had earnestly recommended the keeping of diaries as 
eminently serviceable to those who made it a principal 
object of their lives to establish themselves in all the 
thoughts and ways of piety ; and in the book which he 
entitled Media, he gives a specimen of what, in his 
opinion, such diaries ought to be in extracts from his 
own. With such specimens before us we cannot but 
lament that the carelessness of later times should have 
suffered such a curious and valuable document to perish, 
for perished it is to be feared it is. There is a pathos and 
beauty in some of the passages which he has selected for 
publication, as when he speaks of his occasional retire- 
ments to his hut in " the sweet silent woods of Wid- 
dicre," which make one wish for more ; and there is 
good historical information in what he relates of events 



vi 



PREFACE. 



in the civil wars, or of occurrences in families, his con- 
temporaries, of which one of the most remarkable is the 
account which he gives of the extinction of the ancient 
house of the Calveleys of Cheshire, which would supply 
a great defect in the published history of that remarkable 
family . 

Mr. Heywood appears to have entered fully into the 
spirit of Mr. Ambrose's suggestion. For thirty-six years 
of his life he kept a daily account of what he did ; he 
wrote also, on many occasions, the reflections which 
arose in his mind on the more important events of his 
life ; and he shows that he was attentive to what passed 
around him, and that he sought to tarn singular and 
striking events in the lives of others to his own spiritual 
benefit. 

He wrote in very diminutive volumes, in lines exceed- 
ingly close, and in penmanship small, but not indistinct. 

Many of these volumes are preserved. The Diary 
commences with the 24th of March, 1666 ; a memorable 
day, being that on which he was driven from his home 
by the operation of one of the severe laws by which it 
was vainly hoped that the spirits of the Non-Conformists 
might be subdued. He continued it with a fortitude 
which was greater than the care with which it has been 
preserved. The parts of the Diary which have been 
recovered, after diligent inquiry in the quarters in which 
the volumes might be supposed to have remained, are 
of the following periods : — 

March 24, 1666, to November 7, 1673. 

July 23, 1677, to May 7, 1680. 

May 15, 16S2, to July 31, 1686. 

March 1, 1695, to April 29, 1702, five days before 
his decease. 



PREFACE. 



Vll 



For the period of his life before 1666 we have what 
is more valuable than a Diary ; an account of his early- 
years, written in 1661, entitled by himself, ' A Relation 
of the more considerable Passages of my Life from my 
Infancy hitherto ; ■ and this is followed by Notes of the 
more remarkable events, written at intervals, between 
1661 and 1666. 

It is on these that I have relied principally for the 
facts of his life ; but, beside these, there are other books 
of which some account must be given. 

(1.) A book in which he has entered ' Solemn 
Covenants' — ' Temptations' — ' Experiences' — ' Returns 
of Prayer' — ' Remarkable Providences.' — (2.) Another 
book of ' Solemn Covenants,' which also contains Re- 
views, year by year, of many of the later years of his life. 
(3.) Twenty 1 Meditations upon the doleful Bartholomew 
Day Act, and the effects thereof in silencing so many 
thousand Ministers in these three Nations.' Belonging to 
this class is another book, which I have not had the good 
fortune to see, and know only by the extracts which are 
made from it by the Rev. Richard Slate, in the Life of 
Mr. Heywood, which he prepared several years ago and 
prefixed to the uniform edition of his published writings. 
This is a volume of ' Soliloquies,' and has reference to 
various occurrences of his life, and the state of his mind 
in reference to them, between May 1653 and June 1682. 

Next to these in importance are to be placed several 
biographical accounts of different members of his own 
family, where we find, occasionally, notices of himself. 
The persons of whose lives he has left accounts, thrown 
into the form of regular treatises, are (1.) his father, 
Mr. Richard Heywood ; (2.) his mother, Mrs. Alice Hey- 



Vlll 



PREFACE. 



wood ; (3.) his brother, Mr. Nathaniel Hey wood ; (4.) 
his first wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Angier ; (5.) his father-in- 
law, Mr. John Angier ; (6.) his mother-in-law, Mrs. 
Ellen Angier. Of these, the lives of Mr. Angier and of 
Mr. Nathaniel Heywood, both eminent Puritan and 
Non-Conforming ministers, were printed during his life. 

Of the less remarkable members of his family he has 
left a beautiful and affecting memorial ; a sketch of all 
whom he remembered. The events of the lives and the 
peculiarities of the characters are but slightly touched 
upon, but there is sufficient to show at least that the 
spirit by which the more prominent members of this 
good and religious family were actuated was communi- 
cated to most of the other members of it. This ac- 
count was prepared at a dark period of his varied life ; 
and the Introduction is so pathetic and so beautiful, that 
I have omitted it in the place at which it should have 
occurred in the narrative of his life that it might appear 
more prominently in the Preface. It will be observed 
that they were the thoughts of a Sunday evening, after 
the labours of the day, for all the Sundays were with him 
laborious. The season, too, is remarkable, the close of 
the month of September, when the trees which over- 
shadowed his humble dwelling at Northowram must 
have been shedding their yellow leaves about him : — 

O'lr) Trep (pvWiov yever), rotrjde Kal avdpuii'. 

4 i When I was sitting in mine own house, on Lord's 
day night, Sept. 22, 1678, musing upon mine own death, 
and thinking on those thousands of blessed souls that 
have broken the ice and gone before me into that ce- 
lestial city, many of my godly relations that died in the 



PREFACE. 



IX 



Lord came afresh into my thoughts, and T at last resolved 
to make a catalogue of them that are within my cogni- 
zance or remembrance ; partly to maintain the memory 
of the just, partly to comfort mine own heart that any, 
yea so many, of my kindred in the flesh were gracious, 
are now glorified saints, whom I hope to meet in heaven ; 
partly to recommend them to the observation and imita- 
tion of my sons and their seed, that they may see what 
a religious stock they are branches of, that they or theirs 
may never degenerate, but walk in the same steps that 
their ancestors found peace in, and rest in the end of ; 
nor shall I go further than well-grounded charity accord- 
ing to the Scriptures will admit of, some of them having 
been more than ordinarily eminent in their generations, 
others very hopeful plants of renown, and I more value 
my parentage for godliness than greatness, religion than 
riches." 

With these may be classed the following volumes, 
which are all of an historical character : — (1 .) A History 
of the Chapelry of Coley, in the parish of Halifax, the 
portion of the diocese of York which had the chief be- 
nefit of his labours for more than fifty years, namely, 
from the beginning to the close of his ministerial life ; 
(2.) A particular Account of his own Congregation at 
Northowram, the principal village in the Chapelry of 
Coley, when he had left the Church and appeared in the 
character of Dissenting minister ; (3.) An Account of 
the Ordinations of Ministers by himself and others 
when they had resolved on doing what in them lay to 
keep up a succession of ministers Non-Conforming, like 
themselves ; (4.) An Account of the Meetings, techni- 
cally denominated Meetings of Ministers, in the West 



X 



PREFACE. 



Riding of Yorkshire, from their commencement in 1691 
to the time of his death; (5.) A very copious Register 
of Births, Marriages and Deaths in the Families with 
whom he was acquainted, and in many other Families 
living in the parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire best 
known to him, with occasional biographical notices — a 
volume extremely useful to persons engaged in genealogi- 
cal inquiries; and lastly, a volume containing two distinct 
parts, the first entitled ' Experiments with Reflections/ 
the second, ' Objects and Observations.' In this volume 
are various incidents relating to himself and others. 

For the use of the greater part of these volumes I 
have been indebted to the late Miss Heywood of Mans- 
field, a descendant in the fourth degree, and to my early 
and much-valued friend the Rev. Richard Astley of 
Shrewsbury, into whose hands a portion of them came on 
his marriage with another Miss Heywood, a descendant 
in the fifth degree of him of whom they are so singular 
a memorial. One volume of the Diary is now in the 
curious collection of autographs formed by the Rev. Dr. 
Raffles of Liverpool, to whom I owe the opportunity of 
perusing it, as well as the account which Mr, Heywood 
left of his Northowram congregation . 

Various other remains of Mr. Heywood have been 
entrusted to me by the family, which are not so much 
historical as to require to be noticed in this Preface. 

But little of his correspondence remains ; and of that 
little I printed the greater part several years ago, in the 
Correspondence of his friend Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds 
antiquary, to whom the letters were addressed. Small 
portions of his correspondence are still in possession of 
his descendants, and Mr. Slate has discovered some other 



PREFACE. 



XI 



portions of it and printed them in his valuable volume. 
I have also found something relating to him in Thoresby's 
collection of ' Letters of Divines,' which is now among 
the Birch manuscripts in the British Museum. Amongst 
these manuscripts is also a transcript of many singular 
stories, similar to others which are entered in various of 
the volumes, made by Thoresby from a manuscript of 
Mr. Heywood which is no longer known to exist. 

It remains to be added, that it was in the years 1819, 
1820 and 1821 that my attention was particularly di- 
rected to the body of curious information which these 
little volumes contain, and that I made the transcript of 
the more remarkable portions with the design of using 
them in such a work as that which is now to appear 
before the public ; that I have since recurred at different 
times to the design, but have been drawn away from it 
by other duties ; and that possibly the design might 
never have been executed had not the course of events 
which make up the history of English Protestant Dissent 
led me to undertake researches into the state of opinion 
in that body at the time when Mr. Heywood and those 
who had been ejected with him were giving way to 
younger and bolder men, who soon changed the whole 
aspect of the Non-Conforming body, and to much re- 
flection on the results of those inquiries. It has been 
the fortune of the Presbyterian Dissenters to have wit- 
nessed during the last few years the attempt made to 
wrest out of their hands the places of public worship 
which they had built for themselves, and the funds 
which they had established for the support of their mi- 
nisters ; not by the Church, nor by the State, the ad- 



Xll 



PREFACE. 



ministrators of the law designing in this, as in every- 
thing, only to do justice and maintain the right ; it is 
done by persons whose duty and whose interest it was to 
cherish those whom they would destroy, and whose con- 
duct in this particular has opened to some minds views 
of Dissent which make it far less amiable than in the 
early and confiding periods of their lives they were led 
to consider it. I do not hesitate to profess my own 
conviction, that in this proceeding, so far from seeing 
Dissent aiding the progress of theological science, sound 
knowledge, and political or religious freedom, I see it 
directly opposed to all these ; thus cutting away the most 
solid ground on which it is rested. But though called 
upon to lend my assistance in the defence of the religious 
community in which I was born against their old ene- 
mies the Independents, or rather against the new body 
of people who call themselves by that name (for the old 
Independents, though they saw and lamented the de- 
parture of the Presbyterians from the Calvinian opinions 
of their founders, never thought of recalling them by a 
voice from the Court of Chancery), I should never have 
accomplished this work if I had not been excited to it 
by the encouragement of two distinguished members of 
this family, in whom is remarkably exemplified the saying 
of ancient wisdom, that the seed of the righteous shall be 
blessed after them ; nor would it without their encou- 
ragement be given to the world, when books of which 
the chief or only merit is that they add to the stock 
of original information made easily accessible by being 
widely dispersed, are the last which those who best under- 
stand the public taste will venture to usher to the world. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST PERIOD OF MR. HEYWOOD's LIFE — FROM HIS BIRTH 
TO HIS SETTLEMENT IN THE MINISTRY AT COLEY. 

1630—1650. 

Page 

Chap. I. Descent of Mr. Heywood. — Heywoods of Heywood. 
— Bolton an early seat of religion. — Labours of Bradford and 
Marsh. — Fathers of Protestantism and Puritanism in South 
Lancashire. — Efforts made in furtherance of Protestantism. — 
The Manchester Lecture or Exercise. — Effects. — John and 
the elder Oliver Heywood. — Conversion of the latter. — Rise 
of disaffection to the Protestant Church of England. — Puri- 
tanism. — Points of objection ; ceremonies ; form ; doctrine. 
— The Heywoods Puritans. — Conference at Hampton Court. 
— Determination to put down Puritanism. — Persecution of 
the Puritan ministers 1 

Chap. II. Questionable policy of the Court in respect of the 
Puritans. — Exasperatory measures. — Violation done to the 
Sabbatical principle ; to the Calvinian predilections ; to the 
claim of simplicity of worship. — Severities. — Mr. Hey wood's 
father. — His mother. — Remarkable circumstance in her early 
religious history. — Prosperity of the family. — Character of 
the mother. — Iconoclasm. — Baptism of Mr. Heywood. — Cha- 
racter of himself when young. — His religious education under 
his mother. — Frequent religious exercises in his father's house. 
— Intensity of the devotions. — The Critchlaws. — Aurora bo- 
realis. — The Civil Wars. — Storming of Bolton. — Death of 
William Critchlaw. — The father visits Holland 17 

Chap. III. Early religious impressions. — Puritans' attention to 
the education of those intended for the ministry. — Mr. Hey- 
wood's destination to that office. — His school education. — 
Method pursued in the Lancashire schools. — Removed to 
Cambridge. — Persons with whom more particularly connected 
there, Hill, Akehurst, Birchall. — Studies there. — His prefer- 
ence of four eminent practical writers, Perkins, Bolton, Pres- 
ton, and Sibbes.— Mr. Hammond, the celebrated Cambridge 



xiv CONTENTS. 

Page 

preacher. — Jollie, Bentley, Nathaniel Hey wood, contemporary 
with him at Cambridge. — Major James Jollie. — Leaves the 
University and returns into Lancashire 38 

Chap. IV. The Puritans in the ascendant. — Destruction of the 
Episcopal Church. — Other measures of the Assembly of Di- 
vines. — Scheme of a Presbyterian Church of England. — Never 
executed. — Rise of Independency. — Its principle. — Rapid 
spread. — Sects arising out of it. — Lancashire made a province 
of a Presbyterian Church. — Independency there. — Contest 
between Richard Heywood and the Congregational Eldership 
at Bolton. — Reflections. — Mr. Heywood in the summer of 
1650. — His settlement as a minister at Coley 52 



SECOND PERIOD — TO HIS EJECTMENT BY THE ACT 
OF UNIFORMITY. 

1650—1662. 

Chap. V. The parish of Halifax. — Coley Chapel. — Character 
of the parish by Dr. Favour, James Rither, and Dr. Whita- 
ker. — The Lecture there. — Vicars.— Ministers during the 
Commonwealth. — Ministers in the several chapels at the time 
of Mr. Heywood's settlement at Coley. — Mr. Heywood's pre- 
decessors at Coley.' — Families at Coley. — The Sunderlands. 
— Captain Hodgson. — Sir Thomas Browne, lately an inha- 
bitant of the parish. — The Bests. — Nathaniel Heywood set- 
tles at Illingworth. — He and his brother live together. — 
Marriage with Elizabeth Angier. — Notice of her father. — Her 
death. — The death of Mr. Heywood's mother 71 

Chap. VI. Mr. Heywood's ordination. — Remarks on ordina- 
tion of ministers. — His introduction of discipline in his con- 
gregation at Coley. — Opposition to it; consequences. — Pro- 
posals of removing to York and Preston.. — The Hoghtons. — 
Complete political triumph of the Independents and other 
sectaries. — Attenrpt at friendly union between the Presbyte- 
rians and Independents. — Mr. Newcome, of Manchester. — 
Political movements of the Presbyterians. — Sir George Booth's 
rising. — Increased estrangement between the Presbyterians 
and Independents. — Mr. Heywood taken by a party of Col. 
Lilburn's troop. — His bitter reflections on the political and 
ecclesiastical state of the times. — Spirit in which he looked 
to the king's restoration. — Other ministers the same 93 

Chap. VII. Disappointment of the Presbyterians. — Policy of 
the Court. — Return of the royalist clergy. — Many Puritan 
ministers allowed to retain their cures. — Proclamation against 
conventicles.— Affects Mr. Heywood. — Prohibited from bap- 
tizing.— -Refuses to use the Common Prayer. — His enemies in 



CONTENTS. XV 

Page 

his chapelry. — Citations to York. — Dr. Wittie. — Lady Wat- 
son. — His reflections on cathedral services. — Unsettled state 
of ecclesiastical affairs. — Settlement by the Act of Uniformity. 
— Chief provisions of the Act. — Difficulties of the Puritan 
ministry in complying with the terms of ministerial con- 
formity. — The two thousand " Bartholomean worthies." — 
Private and family circumstances at the time. — The eldest 
brother. — Mr. Hey wood ceases to be the public minister at 
Coley 122 



THIRD PERIOD CONTINUING HIS MINISTRY IN OPPOSITION 

TO THE LAW, OR BY TEMPORARY INDULGENCES. 

1662—1689. 

Chap. VIII. The Ejected Ministers resolve to continue in the 
exercise of their ministry. — Supported by many of the laity. 
— Mr. Hey wood's successors at Coley. — He is excommuni- 
cated. — Effects. — Excommunicated in the diocese of Chester 
also. — Preaches in his own and other private houses. — Con- 
venticle at Captain Hodgson's broken up. — His house search- 
ed. — Other alarms. — The Farnley-wood Plot. — Goes from 
home to preach in distant places. — Mr. Swift's case at Peni- 
ston. — Another excommunication. — The Parliament and the 
King concur in treating the Non- Conformists with severity. 
— Remarkable account of the singing of birds in the night 
while they are at worship. — Preaches at Peniston, Mottram, 
Denton. — Mr. Holland's purposed marriage sermon. — The 
Conventicle Act. — The twenty-fourth of August observed 
as a fast-day. — Question of Non- Conformists attending the 
churches. — Bramhope ; Mr. Dyneley. — Chapels founded in 
the Commonwealth times. — Visits London, Lancashire, Leeds. 
— Many arrests of Non-Conformists. — Case of possession. — 
Various fasts 143 

Chap. IX. The Oxford or Five Mile Act.— The Non-Con- 
formist ministers supporters of the liberties of England, — 
Mr. Hey wood leaves his home in consequence of it. — Travels 
in Cheshire and Lancashire. — Returns home, which is now 
Coley-hall. — The Act very negligently executed. — He preaches 
as usual, only more frequently from home. — His preaching 
tours in Yorkshire, Cheshire and Lancashire. — His introduc- 
tion to the Puritan gentry in South Yorkshire. — Dr. Hitch. 
— Conventicle at Birch-hall. — The bringing in May. — His 
second marriage with Mrs. Abigail Crompton 170 

Chap. X. Reasons for the penal laws being not enforced with 
more severity. — Disposition towards Non-Conformists of three 
northern lieutenants, the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of 



xvi 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Derby, and the Earl of Devonshire. — Anecdotes. — Change of 
the ministry. — Attempt at a comprehension of the Presbyte- 
rians and a toleration of the Independents. — Fails. — Things 
remain as they were, and Mr. Hey wood pursues the same 
course. — State of society at Bingley. — Various journeys of 
Mr. Hey wood. — Deaths of several Non- Conforming ministers., 
— Publishes his Heart-Treasure. — Appears again in his old 
chapel at Coley. — Lady Hoy le. — Other journeys. — Publishes 
his Closet-Prayer. — The two Roots. — Publishes his Sure Mer- 
cies of David. — Mr. Heywood imprisoned at Leeds. — Dis- 
traint upon his goods.— Purchases land. — The Huttons. — 
Gates'. — Death of Mrs. Horton. — Witchcraft.— Summary of 
Mr. Heywood's labours 195 

Chap. XI. Sudden change in the policy of the country re- 
specting the Non-Conformists. — The King's Declaration for 
Indulgence. — Difficulties in accepting the liberty. — Mode of 
procedure. — Address from the Lancashire ministers. — Decla- 
ration of a portion of the Yorkshire ministers. — Form of ap- 
plication for licenses. — Mr. Heywood's license. — His removal 
to his own house at Northowram. — Fits up the largest room 
as a place for worship. — Forms his congregation in church 
order. — Mutual pledge and declaration. — Union with him 
of many Independents. — Foundation of the congregation at 
Warley. — His travels during this summer, and the rise of 
licensed meeting-houses in various places. — Foundation of an 
academy for the education of Non- Conforming ministers. — 
Revival of Presbyterian ordination 222 

Chap. XII. Mr. Heywood interrupted at Lassel-hall. — Christ- 
mas festivities at Woodsome. — Proceedings in Parliament 
respecting the King's Declaration. — The Test Act. — Feeling 
of Non-Conformists towards the Roman Catholics. — Success 
of Mr. Heywood's labours. — The Bayleys. — Devotes his sons 
to the Non -Conforming ministry, and sends them to Mr. 
Hickman's. — Interesting domestic service before their de- 
parture. — Mr. Horton builds a chapel at Sowerby. — Oppo- 
sition of Dr. Hooke. — Violent dissensions in the parish. — 
The Duke of Buckingham at Halifax. — Duel of Mr. Jennings 
and Mr. Aislabie. — Non- Conformity at York ; Leeds ; Wake- 
field. — Interruption. — Deaths of several ministers. — His sons 
go to Mr. Frankland's. — Marriage of his servant, Martha 
Bairstow 246 

Chap. XIII. The licenses withdrawn. — Mr. Heywood con- 
tinues to preach as usual. — Succeeds to some family property. 
— Deaths of Mr. Cotton ; Mr. Bentley ; Mr. Bayley. — Burial 
ground at Morley. — Wish of the people for his return to the 
public chapel at Coley. — Mr. Kirby. — His sons go to finish 
their studies at Edinburgh. — Deaths of his father, sister, 



CONTENTS. 



XVII 



father-in-law and brother, in one year. — Notice of Mr. Na- 
thaniel Hey wood. — rFurther itinerant labours. — Rise of the 
Baptist congregations around Mr. Hey wood. — Death of Sir 
John Armitage. — Commencement of a regular system of or- 
dination in the West Riding of Yorkshire. — Minute account 
of the first of these services. — Further preaching tours.— 
Receives a visit from Lord Rutherford. — Connexion between 
the Scotch and English Presbyterians. — The Lamberts. — 
Death of Mr. Horton. — Mr. Heywood taken before Mr. En- 
twisle for preaching at Shaw-chapel. — Mr. Eliezer Heywood 
becomes chaplain to Mr. Taylor of Walling-wells. — Difference 
between Mr. Hancock and Mr. Bloom. — Differences in Mr. 
Whitehurst's congregation. — Publishes his Life in God's 
Favour. — Excommunicated again. — Various ordinations. — 
Mr. Timothy Jollie. — Mr. Noble. — Mr. John Heywood. — 
The drought of 1681 .—Death of Mr. Marsden 266 

Chap. XIV. Supposed effects of the King's Indulgence. — 
Efforts to prevent the establishment of the Dissenting inter- 
est. — Renewal of severities. — Directed against the younger 
ministers. — Dr. Hooke. — Visit to the academy. — Frequent 
alarms. — State of Non- Conformity in Yorkshire. — Visits 
London. — Publishes his Israel's Lamentation. — Extracts. — 
Settlement of Mr. Ellison as curate of Coley. — Visits York ; 
the Hewleys. — Reflections at the close of 1683. — Further 
alarms. — Visits Mansfield and Norton. — Funeral sermon for 
Mr. Cotes. — Apprehended. — Reflections at the close of 1684. 
• — Convicted at the sessions at Wakefield. — In the castle at 
York from January to December 1685. — Death of the King. 
— Release. — Returns home. — Compounds for his fine. — Visits 
various friends 308 

Chap. XV. The conduct of the Presbyterian ministers in the 
preceding struggle not so much one of principle as of feeling. 
— General view of the objects of the struggle. — Close of it. — 
King James' Declaration of Liberty of Conscience. — Another 
acknowledgment of the dispensing power. — Opposition of 
the Church. — Mr. Heywood's reflections at the close of the 
year 1687. — Measures pursued under the liberty granted by 
King James' Declaration ; three ordinations ; foundation of 
the chapel at Northowram ; of the school there. — Publishes 
his Baptismal Bonds. — The Revolution. — The Toleration Act. 
— The Principle of Toleration. — Proceedings under it of the 
Non- Conformists. — Another ordination. — Mr. Carrington. . 338 



b 



XV111 



CONTENTS. 



FOURTH AND LAST PERIOD WHILE MINISTER AT NORTH- 

OWRAM UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE ACT OF TOLE- 
RATION, TO HIS DEATH. 

1689—1702. 

Page 

Chap. XVI. Mr. Hey wood's personal state at the time when 
the Act of Toleration gave relief. — The affair of the Surey 
Demoniac. — Ordination of Mr. Kirshaw and Independent 
objections. — Attempt at a general union of the Presbyterians 
and Independents. — Heads of Agreement determined on by 
the ministers in London. — Meeting at Wakefield of the West 
Riding ministers, at which they are assented to. — Meetings 
of ministers. Mr. Smith's proposition. — Ordination of Dr. 
Colton of York ; and of others. — -Several publications of Mr. 
Heywood's. — Lord Wharton 366 

Chap. XVII. Diary resumed. — -Publishes The New Creature. 
— Symptoms of declining orthodoxy in the Non- Conformist 
body. — Thomas Bradbury. — Opening of the chapel at Lidget. 
— Private conference of ministers. — Chapels founded at Pon- 
tefract ; York ; Warley ; Bingley ; Rotherham ; Pudsey. — 
Writes notices of Non- Conforming ministers. — His last visit 
to Lancashire, and proceedings of the Non- Conformists there. 
— Invited to Manchester; Halifax. — Nathaniel Priestley. — 
Ordination of Mr. Cotton. — Invited to London. — His affairs 
in respect of income, etc. — Writes a preface to Mr. Frank- 
land's treatise against a Socinian. — Ralph Thoresby conforms 
to the Church. — Ordination of Mr. Blamire. — Opening of 
the chapel at Wakefield. — Death of Mr. Frankland. — Cor- 
respondence on the history and affairs of Non- Conformity. — 
Singular incident at Manchester. — Various publications.— 
Mr. Sharp. — Mr. Sylvester. — Another ordination. — Mr. Mat- 
thew Smith's heterodoxy. — Marriage of Eliezer Heywood. — 
Disputes in the Craven congregation. — Decline of Mr. Hey- 
wood's health, — Death. — Funeral. — Will.— -Portrait. — House. 
— Chapel. — Ministers at Northowram after him. — Ejected 
ministers surviving him. — His sons and their descendants. — 
Descendants of his brother Nathaniel. — Testimonies to his 
character 383 



SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN 
DISSENTERS. 

Chap. XVIII. Numbers of the Non-Conformists. — Yorkshire 
congregations. — Presbyterian Dissenters not a sect nor a 
church. — Erection of their chapels. — Trustees. — Mode of 



CONTENTS. 



xix 



conducting service. — Want of recognized rules. — Election of 
ministers. — Means of support. — Eminent benefactors : Lady 
Hewley ; the Hollises ; Dr. Daniel Williams. — Academies. — 
Learning of the early ministers. — Ordinations. — Meetings 
of ministers. — The London ministers. — Absence of a creed. 
— Principle of free inquiry. — State of the religious world at 
the beginning of Dissent. — Disregard of the requirement of 
subscription by the Act of Toleration. — Their want of union 
a main cause of their subsequent decline. — Other causes. — 
Changes consequent on the assertion of the right of private 
judgment. — Introduction of Arianism. — Socinianism. — Mr. 
Lindsey. — Dr. Priestley. — Returns to the Church. — Great 
effect of Methodism. — Extinction of many of the Yorkshire 
congregations. — The Presbyterians still an important element 
in English society 411 



CORRIGENDA. 



Page 26, last line, in the quotation from Heylyn insert the word 
most before exquisite. 

38, line 11, for then read thus. 

40, line 26, for school read schools. 

60, line 28, for enlighted read enlightened. 

— — 86, line 3, for Langley read Langdale. 

91, line I, for Mr. read Mrs. 

130, line 6, for Sales read Sale. 

190, note, line 12,/or 1837 read 1838. 

223, line 17, insert the before persons. 

225, line 11, for could read would. 

297, line 8, for Dissenters read dissenters. 

411, line 11, for Uniformity read Toleration. 



THE LIFE 

OF 

OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



CHAPTER I. 



DESCENT OF MR. HEYWOOD. HEYWOODS OF HEYWOOD. BOLTON AN 

EARLY SEAT OF RELIGION. LABOURS OF BRADFORD AND MARSH. 

FATHERS OF PROTESTANTISM AND PURITANISM IN SOUTH LAN- 
CASHIRE. EFFORTS MADE IN FURTHERANCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 

THE MANCHESTER LECTURE OR EXERCISE. EFFECTS. JOHN AND 

THE ELDER OLIVER HEYWOOD. CONVERSION OF THE LATTER. 

RISE OF DISAFFECTION TO THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

PURITANISM. POINTS OF OBJECTION; CEREMONIES; FORM; 

DOCTRINE. THE HEYWOODS PURITANS. CONFERENCE AT HAMP- 
TON COURT. DETERMINATION TO PUT DOWN PURITANISM. PER- 
SECUTION OF THE PURITAN MINISTERS. 



THE ancestors of Mr. Hey wood, in whatever line they 
can be traced, were inhabitants of the parish of Bolton- 
en-le-Moors in Lancashire. They were small free- 
holders, cultivating their own lands, and generally en- 
gaged in the manufactures for which those parts of the 
country were then in repute. His father, grandfather, 
and great grandfather, of all of whom he has left some 
account, were settled in that part of the parish of Bolton 
where it approaches the confines of the neighbouring 




B 



2 



THE LIFE OF 



parish of Manchester. Little Lever, the village in which 
his father resided, and where he himself was born, had 
easy communication with both Manchester and Bolton, 
as it lay upon the high road between those towns. 
There also lived his grandfather ; but the remoter an- 
cestor was an inhabitant of the neighbouring dell called 
the Water-side, which, although now full of mills and 
cottages, was in those days a secluded and romantic 
place. 

A small table will present more clearly to the mind 
of the reader the several ancestors of Mr. Heywood 
than any narrative : — 

John Heywood, of Heywood Mill, =p — Seddon, 
Waterside. Born about 1530. | of Prestolee. 

i ; ; J 

Oliver Heywood, of Little Lever. =f= Alice Hulton, sister of 

Died in 1628, aged about 72. j Adam Hulton, of Brightmet. 

Alice Critchlaw, of Long- =p Richard Heywood, = Margaret Brereton, 
worth, first wife, sister of Little Lever. second wife. Died 

of William, Francis, Died 1677, aged 81. in 1697. 
Hugh, and Ralph. 



I 1 1 1 

John, OLIVER, Nathaniel, Josiah. 
born 1630. 

Not many miles from Little Lever, to the east, is the 
township of Heywood, on which was seated a family who 
derived from it their surname, from the earliest times to 
which we can usually ascend in genealogical investiga- 
tions. The original charter still exists, by which Adam 
de Burgo, the chief lord of the fee in which Heywood 
was comprehended, gave the lands to one Peter, and is 
remarkable for the curious specification of the boun- 
daries. It has for witnesses the principal gentry in 
those parts of Lancashire : — Geffery de Cheteham, Alex- 
ander de Pilkington, Thomas de Prestwich, Geffery de 
Radcliffe, William de Radcliffe, and others, and cannot 
be referred to a period later than the first fifteen years 
of the reign of King Edward the First. This Peter is 
called de Heywood, and from him sprung a numerous 
family bearing that surname, who continued on the 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



3 



lands of Heywood, till, in the latter part of the seven- 
teenth century, they were induced by the Earls of Derby 
to remove to the Isle of Man. In that island they filled 
the highest offices of trust and importance belonging to 
that singular political community, being Deemsters, 
Speakers of the House of Keys, and one of them At- 
torney-General, when they sold their ancient inherit- 
ance in Lancashire. 

The Heywoods of Maristowe in Devonshire were a 
younger branch of this family ; and there is some reason 
to believe that the Heywoods of Little Lever descended 
from a younger son, though the particular point at which 
they were connected cannot now be determined. It 
happens, in this case, as in many others, that a very 
little inquiry at the proper time, and a very little pains 
in committing to writing the results of such an inquiry, 
would save a world of fruitless pains and expense, when 
once a curiosity arises respecting such trifles as these. 

The Heywoods of Heywood had never, in the best of 
times, either the talent, the influence, or the wealth 
which it has been the fortune of the descendants of 
John Heywood of the Waterside to possess ; but they 
had more of the grace of ancestry. Their pedigree is 
remarkably authentic, having been deduced in the first 
instance from the family evidences by Dodsworth, the 
Charter Antiquary of the seventeenth century*, and sub- 
sequently registered by the heralds on their visitation. 

Mr. Heywood speaks on this point with equal mo- 
desty and piety : — " 'Tis possible we might spring from 

* His notes still remain among his manuscripts at the Bodleian, 
vol. lxxix. f. 59, and vol. cxvii. f. 35. The arms borne by the 
Heywoods of Heywood w T ere three torteaux between two red bend- 
lets on a silver field, and were evidently formed, like those of Byron, 
on the figure borne by the early lords of Manchester. The old 
writer of epigrams, John Heywood, in the reign of Elizabeth, thus 
Latinizes the name — Fceni Sylva ; but this is inadmissible. Hey- 
wood is the wood abounding in streams of water, or bounded by 
them, as Heywood is on one side by the river Roch ; or the w r ood 
inclosed by a paling ; but probably the former, the earliest ortho- 
graphy of the word being Eywood. 

B 2 



4 



THE LIFE OF 



some younger brother of the house of Heywood of 
Hey wood, an ancient esquire's seat betwixt Rochdale 
and Bury ; for old Mr. Robert Heywood whom I 
knew, a pious reverend old gentleman and an excellent 
poet, was wont to call my father Cousin. But kinship 
grows out in process of time ; and 'tis not much ma- 
terial what family we are of, so that we be of the house- 
hold of faith, and have God for our Father, Christ for 
our elder Brother, and the Spirit of Grace running in 
our best veins, and acting us for God." 

It is said of the parish of Bolton by the writer of 
the ' Lives of the Ejected and Silenced Ministers in 
1662/ that it was " an ancient and famous seat of re- 
ligion : " and Mr. Heywood speaks of it as having been 
" long famous for glorious professors of the Gospel, and 
powerful preachers." In the very dawn of the Reforma- 
tion, in the reign of King Edward the Sixth, these 
parts of the county were the principal field of the 
labours of the two eminent preachers, Bradford and 
Marsh, who, having distinguished themselves by their 
zeal in promoting the principles of the Reformation, 
were put to the cruel death of burning in the succeed- 
ing reign. Letters are extant which were written by 
them to members of their families or to their converts 
in these parts, full of affectionate entreaty to constancy 
in the profession which they had made, and breathing, 
on their own part, the spirit of the most heroic self- 
devotion # . These letters show us what their preaching 

* See Certain most godly, fruitful, and comfortable Letters of such 
true Saints and holy Martyrs of God as in the late bloody persecution 
here within this realm gave their lives for the Defence of Chrisfs 
Holy Gospel, 4to, 1564, probably collected and published by Cover- 
dale. It contains several letters of the two Lancashire martyrs, 
addressed to their relations and friends at Manchester and in the 
neighbourhood. Bradford's letters are now the more interesting 
on account of their greater particularity. He mentions Bolton and 
other towns around Manchester as places at which he had preached ; 
and he even names particular persons in those parts who had been 
converted by his preaching, beside his mother, sisters, and brother- 
in-law, who resided at Manchester, which was his birth-place. The 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



5 



must have been ; and there can be no doubt that the 
effects of their labours would live long after them, that 
the places in which they had preached would long retain 
a tincture of the piety first infused by them, and that to 
them may be traced, as its origin, that devotional spirit 
which has always prevailed in the parts of the country of 
which we are speaking. 

The friends of the Reformation made use of every 
means to keep up in these places a spirit of earnest 
piety. The Reformation in South Lancashire was not, 
as in many other parts of the kingdom, a quiet acqui- 
escence in whatever form of religion the political au- 
thorities of the time enforced upon the people. There 
was an active opposition on the part of the superior 
gentry, many of whom remained, as their descendants 

names are these : — John Travis, Thomas Sorocold, Laurence and 
James Bradshaw, R. Shalcross and his wife, R. Bolton, and S. 
Wilde. 

I have taken some pains to identify these fathers of Protestantism 
and Puritanism, but with little success. R. Bolton is no doubt 
Robert Bolton of Little Bolton, an esquire and man of substance, 
who in his will, made in 1560, gives a copy of the Paraphrases of 
Erasmus upon the Gospels to his cousin, Roger Lever. We do not 
find in him, however, the austerities which frequently accompanied 
a strict religious profession in those times, as he speaks of much gay 
apparel belonging to him, and bequeaths to one of his neighbours 
his pack of hounds. About the same time, William Bruck, of Little 
Bolton, who calls this Robert Bolton his master, leaves in his will 
twenty shillings to be expended in books for the church of Bolton. 
Thomas Sorocold lived in Salford, and in 1556 was executor to the 
will of his kinsman, Gilbert Sorocold, of the same place, who names 
for overseers Sir William Radcliffe, Knight, and Alexander Rad- 
cliffe, Esquire. The Sorocolds were of ancient descent and good 
alliance in these parts, having married with the families of Strange- 
ways, Molineux, and Prestwich. Richard Shalcross was living at 
Manchester in the fourth year of Edward the Sixth, when he was 
assessed to the subsidy granted in that year on goods of the annual 
value of 12/. ; the highest assessment in that town being on goods 
of 251. annual value. At this sum Edward Janney was assessed, 
who held jointly with Richard Shalcross a tavern at the Smithy 
Door in Manchester. Janney was a considerable merchant in Man- 
chester, and it appears by his will that he founded a school at Bow- 
den, where he had the advowson of the church. 



6 



THE LIFE OF 



now do, stedfast to the form in which Christianity had 
been for so many centuries professed among us. The 
reformed party, on the other hand, were a zealous and 
earnest body of men, and resorted in crowds to the 
Religious Exercise as it was called, or Lecture, which, in 
the reign of Elizabeth, was set up in the great church 
at Manchester. This Lecture was held on the second 
Thursday in each succeeding month, and all the clergy, 
and all the readers and schoolmasters in the neighbour- 
ing churches and chapels, were required to attend, while 
eloquent preachers pointed out the errors of Popery, 
and exhorted the people to an earnest examination of 
Scripture, and a strict and holy l\fe # . These lectures, 
w T hich were set up in other places also, were among the 
most efficient means which were employed to extend 
and strengthen the principles of the Reformation. 

The Lecture at Manchester was established by the 
Bishop of Chester, in whose diocese these parts of the 
kingdom are, at the particular suggestion of the Earl of 
Huntingdon, the zealous Lord President of the North. 
The bishop, a very earnest reformer, was at the same 
time Warden of Manchester, and an occasional resident 
in the town. But there was connected with them a 
novel system of clerical discipline, the effect of which 
would be to rouse to greater exertion the parochial 

* The preaching of Bourn, one of the Fellows of the Church of 
Manchester, as described by Hollingworth, the old annalist of Man- 
chester, may probably be taken as a sjDecimen of the topics of the 
discourses delivered on these occasions: — " He seldom varied the 
method of his preaching, which, after explication of his text, was 
doctrine-proof of it by Scripture ; by reason answering one or more 
objections : and then the uses ; first, of information ; secondly, of 
confutation of Popery in this or in that ; thirdly, of reprehension ; 
fourthly, of examination : fifthly, of exhortation ; and lastly, of con- 
solation." See History of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, by 
Samuel Hibbert, M.D., 4to, 1828, p. 120. — Bruen of Bruen- Staple- 
ford, whose Life by Hinde is a curious picture of the manner of 
life of a religious person of the times immediately ensuing on 
the Reformation, was accustomed to resort to the Lecture at Man- 
chester. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



7 



ministers who were settled in the churches and chapels 
around. A body of persons called Moderators was 
established, who, on the afternoon of the day on which 
the Lecture was preached, conferred with the country 
ministers, examined, instructed, directed, and, if need 
were, censured them # . Thus the system had a two- 
fold operation, first by the preaching itself, on the minds 
of the laity who flocked to the church from all parts ; 
and by the discipline, on the minds of the labouring 
clergy, each of whom was the centre of religious in- 
fluences in the places in which they were stationed. 

There was also, in the reign of Elizabeth, a body of 
itinerant lecturers established in Lancashire, consisting 
of four ministers, whose duty it was to travel about, and 
preach wherever opportunity was afforded them. 

By these means the tone of religious feeling and 
action was kept at a higher pitch in the country around 
Manchester than in most other parts of the kingdom. 

The first known ancestor of Mr. Heywood lived in 
the days of Bradford and Marsh, but his descendant 
has left us no account of what was his religious course. 
There is reason to think that his ancestors, the Critch- 
laws and Hultons, took impression from the labours of 
the preachers of the Reformation sooner than the Hey- 
woods. Of his grandfather, he had heard that for sixty 
years of his life he was of good reputation, but not 
religious. In the phrase of the time he was 6 carnal,' a 
term which his own grandson applies to him, and he 
notices the following proof of it : — he did not scruple 
to spend the afternoon of the Sabbath-day in shooting 
at the butts on Lomas Moss, then a piece of uninclosed 
ground not far from Little Lever. His wife was of a 
more serious turnf ; she attended the zealous ministry 

* History of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, p. 100. 

f The Hultons were a family of great worth and piety. One of 
them, a nephew of Mrs. Heywood, acquired great wealth as a mer- 
chant in London, with part of which he endowed a Lecture at 
Bolton. He was the intimate friend of Ashhurst, another merchant 



8 



THE LIFE OF 



of Mr. Hubbert at the chapel in Ainsworth, about a 
mile from her residence. Mr. Hubbert, at her request, 
took some pains to persuade her husband to leave off 
his Sunday practice, and to spend the* afternoons with 
his family, in reading the Scriptures and praying with 
them. His efforts were, however, fruitless ; and it was 
at last by one of those fortuitous occurrences — -which, 
to the religious mind, easily put on the appearance of 
being special interferences of the Power by which the 
circumstances of our probation are appointed — that a 
change was produced in him. He was attending the 
fair at Bury. Mr. Paget, then the minister of the chapel 
at Blackley, was preaching in the church. In an idle 
mood he entered the church. The word preached came 
home upon his heart. He was from that time, says his 
grandson, " an eminent Christian, full of prayer and 
holy meditation," and continued till his death an at- 
tendant on the ministry of Mr. Paget, who told Mr. 
Hey wood many years afterwards, " how gracious, and 
zealous, and industrious his grandfather had been, after 
God set his face heavenward." Such was the first in- 
troduction into this family of that deep feeling of religion 
which soon became its marked and very striking cha- 
racteristic, 

Of the next generation, the parents of Mr. Heywood, 
we have much fuller information from his pen ; but as 
they belonged to the Puritan party in the English 
Church, and educated their son in all the prejudices 
and principles of that party, it is proper that, before we 
proceed, some account should be given of the rise of 
Puritanism, and of the principal characteristics by which 
it was distinguished. 

It was required for the purposes of the Reformers that 
they should endeavour to loosen men's minds from that 
respect for ecclesiastical authority which must have pre- 

in London, of a Lancashire family, distinguished by his success in 
commerce, and the pious and benevolent use which he made of his 
great wealth. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



9 



vailed to a great extent, when there had been so many 
centuries of unquestioning submission ; and perhaps 
they did not perceive, that while they sought to dimi- 
nish the respect for the authority of the Church, they, 
were at the same time enfeebling respect for spiritual 
authority in general. It was difficult for them to teach 
that their disciples should repudiate the authority of the 
General Church, in which at least most of the Christian 
nations were still comprehended, and at the same time 
teach that obedience was due to the authorities in the 
English Reformed Church. Again, they taught the people 
to look to the Scriptures, and to receive nothing but what 
was taught therein, as in their opinion one of the best 
means of removing those corruptions of the pure Chris- 
tian doctrine which it had suffered in the times when the 
supremacy of the Church of Rome was advancing to its 
completion : but they did not perceive, that by thus ap- 
pealing to the Scriptures, they were opening the door 
to endless diversity of opinion ; it being now established 
by the experience of centuries, that men will be led to 
very different conclusions, who, relying on their own 
powers, in faithfulness and sincerity endeavour to collect 
for themselves from that book what is the pure and sim- 
ple and permanent truth which our Saviour and his 
Apostles intended to communicate, and in what way a 
visible profession of it shall be made. 1 do not speak 
of the uncultivated or the less cultivated mind ; but 
those persons who appear in every respect to be the 
best fitted for the work must necessarily find diffi- 
culties which they cannot overcome, and will be led to 
desire aid ab extra in these investigations, if it can be 
obtained. 

While, therefore, the fathers of the Reformation were 
using every means to detach the people from reverence 
for the Church to which their ancestors had belonged, 
and inviting them to " search the Scriptures," and to 
bring every doctrine and religious practice to the test of 



10 



THE LIFE OF 



its conformity with Scripture, they were preparing the 
way for differences and dissensions in their own body, 
for strife and the perpetual struggle of party. 

In point of fact, these differences did speedily mani- 
fest themselves ; and before the close of the reign of 
Elizabeth there had grown up in the Reformed Church 
a very numerous and powerful party, who were greatly 
dissatisfied with the constitution of the Church as it 
was settled in the reign of King Edward the Sixth, and 
restored by Queen Elizabeth. They were powerful from 
their numbers, but still more from their zeal, their sin- 
cerity of purpose, their holy and virtuous lives ; they 
were in fact, for the most part, the persons who had 
been wrought upon by such preachers as Bradford, and 
the children of those persons ; sincere, zealous believers 
in the importance and value of that spiritual freedom 
which they believed themselves to have attained, and 
that purer system of faith and worship which had taken 
place of the superstition that had passed away, in con- 
tradistinction to those who at heart were indifferent to 
the subject, or willing to follow wherever the temporal 
authorities of the time directed. 

I would not say that all the virtue, or that all the re- 
ligion of that period was with the Puritans ; but it can 
hardly be doubted that both religion and virtue were of 
a higher tone with them than with the acquiescent party. 
I speak now of the Original Puritans, and not of those 
of a later period, when they became corrupted by enter- 
ing into the contentions of political life, and becoming 
candidates for political power. Neither do I mean to say 
that there may not be genuine piety and high-minded 
conduct without that severity of life which they deemed 
it their duty to practise, without those endless religious 
exercises in which they were engaged, without that con- 
tempt of the elegant ornaments and the healthful re- 
freshments of life, and without those judaical notions 
which led them to deem gathering a flower on the Sab- 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



II 



bath a serious moral offence # ; or that men may not 
live more usefully and more acceptably in a milder 
system of practice. 

Nor can it perhaps be denied that they " walked not 
charitably," in laying so great a stress on points in 
which they differed from their neighbours. Where men 
must act in concert, it is manifest that something of 
individual opinion must be given up, out of regard to 
the feelings and wishes of others ; and there may be 
quite as much intolerance in a singularity of practice as 
in the attempts to enforce uniformity, and quite as much 
superstition in rejecting as in adopting a ceremony. It 
is, however, one of the most difficult problems in morals 
to draw the line which shall separate things which may 
be lawfully given up out of deference to others or of re- 
gard to the maintenance of religious union and order, 
and those which a conscientious man must retain at all 
events, and embody in his practice ; nor is it less dif- 
ficult to ascertain the amount of knowledge and strength 
of conviction required to make a peculiarity in religious 
practice a duty. But surely the peace and unity of the 
newly-formed Church needed not to have been disturbed 
about the shape or colour of a robe ; the ring in mar- 
riage, a custom which had descended from a very re- 
mote antiquity ; the sponsors in baptism, which are at 
least another link of piety, of which we have far too 
few, in the frame of the social state ; the cross in bap- 
tism, the turning to the east, the bowing at the name of 
Jesus, the kneeling at the Eucharist, which are innocent, 
respectful, and picturesque customs, and are moreover 
descended to us from primitive antiquity. The obser- 
vance of ecclesiastical times and commemorations keeps 
alive attention to spiritual affairs, and the memory of 
the just who are gone. The bestowing peculiar sanctity 

* It is related of Wilson, the Puritan Reformer of Maidstone, a 
member of the Assembly of Divines, that he brought the parish to 
that state, that " not a rose or a flower was suffered to be gathered 
on the Lord's Day."— See his Life, 12mo, 1672, p. 41. 



12 



THE LIFE OF 



on places set apart for Christian worship seems favour- 
able to Christian influences ; and little is gained by dis- 
connecting the exercises of religion from all that is most 
pleasing to the eye or most agreeable to the ear. It was 
at least a pity that the harmony of the Church should 
have ever been disturbed by scruples about things such 
as these. 

The defence of the Puritans in their conduct with 
respect of these, the chief ceremonies to which they ob- 
jected, is founded in the duty of resisting that which is 
imposed because it is imposed, and the want of Scrip- 
ture authority for such practices. But there must surely 
be a power of regulation somewhere ; if that is not the 
case, all must soon be confusion and disorder. Place 
the authority wherever it may — in the common consent 
and practice of the Church from the beginning, in the 
councils, in the bishops and clergy of the English Church, 
or in them, jointly with King, Lords, and Commons, by 
which the will of the English nation is gathered, the 
same objection would apply, so that there could be no 
union, no order whatever, in a case in which union and 
order are pre-eminently desirable, and no authority to 
which to appeal when contests arose. That they were 
deficient of Scripture authority, and as the Puritan 
phrase was, and continued long after the word Puritan 
ceased to designate any particular body of persons, but 
' relics of Popery,' may be true, but it does not follow 
that everything in Popery is evil ; and there are many 
things in every mode of Christian profession, even that 
which is most simple, for which express Scripture war- 
rant cannot be produced. 

The objection to particular officers who are found in 
the constitution of the Church, as it was settled at the 
Reformation, such as deans and archdeacons, chancel- 
lors and treasurers, that neither the words nor the 
offices are found in the New Testament, seems founded 
in the same mistake of expecting to find everything in 
Scripture. Common sense must show to every one, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



13 



that if there are buildings appropriated to the purposes 
of religion, there must be persons who have the charge 
of them ; if a watchful eye is to be kept on the conduct 
of the inferior clergy, if any ecclesiastical discipline is to 
be maintained, this must be done by some person ; and 
if there are revenues, there must be those to collect and 
distribute them. 

There were, however, two objections taken by the 
Puritans to the frame and order of the Church of a far 
weightier character. 

The one was the establishment of a Liturgy. A settled 
form of prayer, however excellent it may be, can never 
fully satisfy minds under the influence of very strong 
religious feeling ; and by the Puritans it was regarded as 
a " quenching of the Spirit" in ministers when engaged 
in their public duty, with whose outpourings in private 
they were so often edified and delighted. 

The other was the constitution of the English Church, 
as being in the episcopal order. Other Reformed Churches 
were without the order of bishop, and placed the su- 
preme authority in the Church, and the right of ordina- 
tion to the office of minister in assemblies of presbyters. 
This was the case at Geneva and in Scotland. The 
Puritans in general would have had it so here ; and 
they were the more eager in the assertion of this prin- 
ciple, when they found the bishops the active agents in 
the persecution to which they were exposed, their mini- 
sters silenced, suspended, and degraded by episcopal 
authority, and many of them driven into exile. This 
hardened the hearts of the Puritans against the order 
and office of bishop. One of the terms by which they 
were designated arose out of this leading principle and 
object, the term Presbyterian. 

Another term by which the party of whom I am 
speaking were often called was Precisians : this was 
nearly allied to the term Puritan. It arose out of a 
certain preciseness of conduct, the result of their high 
conscientiousness and their solemn fears. 



14 



THE LIFE OF 



It does not appear that the Puritans differed widely 
from the other members of the Church in respect of 
points of doctrine. As a brief description of the differ- 
ence that might exist, it may be said that the leaning of 
the Puritans was to the Calvinian system, the leaning of 
the other party to what are called Arminian and Arian 
opinions. The Articles seem to have been framed to 
comprehend men whose opinions greatly differed in re- 
spect of Christian truth. Anything like the free-thinking 
and scepticism of Christianity, which in later times have 
more or less prevailed in England, can hardly be traced 
to a period before the time of Falkland and Chilling- 
worth. The free- thinking before that time was for the 
most part mere profanity. 

Less than this could not be said on the two great 
parties into which the Church of England became di- 
vided before the close of the reign of Elizabeth. During 
that reign, and in the reigns of James the First and 
Charles the First, the whole weight of temporal power 
was given to those, who, satisfied with the Church as it 
was established in the reign of Edward the Sixth, sought 
no further reforms, but in quietness and peace to grow 
in holiness and meetness for heaven under its sacred in- 
fluences ; the more enlightened members of it regarding 
it a part of the Primitive or Catholic Church, which 
had recovered its pristine simplicity by the removal of 
the accretions of later centuries : the tendency there 
was to indifference and formality. The Puritan or move- 
ment party was strong in zeal, sincerity, earnestness, 
virtue, and piety ; like the martyrs of the Reformation, 
they would have given their bodies to be burned : the 
tendency there was to fanaticism and uncharitableness. 

The family of Mr. Heywood, including all his con- 
nexions both on his father's and his mother's side, be- 
longed to the Puritan section of the English Church, 
and few persons drank more deeply of the spirit of 
Puritanism than did Richard and Alice Heywood, his 
father and mother. It prevailed, indeed, all over these 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



15 



parts of Lancashire, so that there was scarcely a middle 
party between the Puritans or extreme Protestants and the 
Papists, of whom there were great numbers. At Man- 
chester, in particular, there were some of the most vio- 
lent and prejudiced Puritans ; and while Papists were 
being imprisoned in that town for their adherence to 
the old profession, a Puritan printing-press was at work, 
from which issued some of those bitter, slanderous, and 
outrageous writings which form the body of tracts known 
by the name of the Marprelate Tracts # . 

On the accession of James the First the Puritans ex- 
pected that some concessions would be made to them, 
and that a rigid conformity to all the ceremonies would 
no longer be required from the ministers. The king 
showed a disposition to attend to their desires ; he sat 
in person while the heads of the two parties debated 
before him : this was done at Hampton Court. Ac- 
cording to the report which is given of this contro- 
versy, the advantage was not on the side of the Puri- 
tans. They disputed, however, at a disadvantage, for 
the king appears not to have been a perfectly impartial 
umpire, but to have interfered occasionally in a manner 
to awe and confound the Puritans' advocates. In the 
issue the king declared his opinion, that the Puritan ob- 
jections were merely frivolous, and that he was deter- 
mined to maintain the Church as he found it, and to 
enforce conformity. 

The case of one of the Lancashire ministers, a very 
zealous Puritan, was in this conference brought especially 
before the king. It was that of Mr. Midgely, the vicar 
of Rochdale, a man of unquestionable piety and great 
usefulness in that large parish. He objected to some of 
the ceremonies, particularly to the mode of administer- 
ing the Lord's Supper, and was accustomed to carry the 
bread about the church in a basket. The king was be- 
sought to allow this to be passed over, and to grant the 

* Fuller's Church History, book ix. p. 195 ; but a larger account 
is given by Strype. 



16 



THE LIFE OF 



same indulgence to some other Lancashire ministers. 
But he was inexorable ; and the Bishop of Chester 
was directed to proceed against Mr. Midgely and other 
ministers who were not conformable. Mr. Midgely, who 
was one of the moderators, was deprived, and, according 
to Mr. Heywood, degraded from the ministry*. 

The persecution, so it may be called, of the Puritans 
was henceforth not less severe than it had been in the 
reign of Elizabeth, and in particular the Bishops of 
Chester were thenceforth engaged in a perpetual struggle 
with the refractory ministers. Paget was silenced at 
Blackley, Broxholme at Denton, and Rathband at the 
chapel in Ainsworth. Other zealous ministers were 
silenced in other places around. Some were fined, 
others imprisoned. Paget fled to Holland. Several 
Lancashire ministers sought peace and freedom in New 
England. It was while this contest was at its height 
that Mr. Heywood was born. 

* There were two Midgelys at Rochdale, father and son, and it 
is not easy to say what belongs to each of them. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



17 



CHAPTER II. 

QUESTIONABLE POLICY OF THE COURT IN RESPECT OF THE PURITANS. 
EXASPERATORY MEASURES. VIOLATION DONE TO THE SABBATI- 
CAL PRINCIPLE ; TO THE CALVINIAN PREDILECTIONS ; TO THE 

CLAIM OF SIMPLICITY OF WORSHIP. SEVERITIES. MR. HEYWOOD's 

FATHER. HIS MOTHER. REMARKABLE CIRCUMSTANCE IN HER 

EARLY RELIGIOUS HISTORY. PROSPERITY OF THE FAMILY. — CHA- 
RACTER OF THE MOTHER. ICONOCLASM. BAPTISM OF MR. HEY- 
WOOD. CHARACTER OF HIMSELF WHEN YOUNG. HIS RELIGIOUS 

EDUCATION UNDER HIS MOTHER. FREQUENT RELIGIOUS EXERCISES 

IN HIS FATHER'S HOUSE. INTENSITY OF THE DEVOTIONS. THE 

CRITCHLAWS. AURORA BOREALIS. THE CIVIL WARS. STORMING 

OF BOLTON. DEATH OF WILLIAM CRITCHLAW. THE FATHER VI- 
SITS HOLLAND. 

The account which Fuller has given of the conference 
at Hampton Court is in the best manner of that very 
sensible and agreeable writer, and has every appearance 
of authenticity and truth. The king, whenever he in- 
terposes, makes very shrewd and pertinent remarks ; 
and in those days, when men had not learned the slow- 
coming truth, that there is a toleration and a variety 
in christian practice quite consistent with the existence 
of as much ecclesiastical order as is absolutely neces- 
sary, it would have been no easy matter to reply to 
the answer which he gave to the application for indul- 
gence to the Puritan ministers, on the ground that if 
then compelled to conformity they would lose their 
credit in the country: — "You show yourself an un- 
charitable man : we have here taken pains, and in the 

c 



18 



THE LIFE OF 



end have concluded on unity and uniformity ; and you, 
forsooth, must prefer the credits of a few private men 
before the peace of the church. This is just the Scotch 
argument when anything was concluded which disliked 
some humours. Let them either conform themselves 
shortly or they shall hear of it # ." But with all his 
sense and shrewdness he wanted the higher reach which 
could comprehend the depth of religious feeling in the 
minds of so many of his subjects, the height of the 
excitement which the Reformation had produced, the 
effect of the example of the martyrs of the Reformation ; 
or see in the determination thus expressed, the source of 
infinite misery to his family, and a principal cause of the 
final ruin of his royal house. No doubt concessions 
were required of antient rights of the crown which it 
could hardly be expected would be surrendered without 
an appeal to the sword ; but it was mainly the religious 
feeling which gave bitterness to the contest, and enabled 
the popular party to achieve the victory. 

The wisdom would have been to overlook the little 
peculiarities of particular ministers, not interfering with 
them if they did not conform to the order of the church 
in every minute circumstance, as long as their irregular- 
ities were innocuous and they acquitted themselves well 
in the higher duties of their office. If their peculiarities 
gave offence to any of their parishioners who loved the 
ceremonies as ardently perhaps as the pastor disliked 
them, and an arbitrement was necessarily required from 
some authority which by law could decide between them, 
it would have been the wiser part to deal with the of- 
fending party as easily as possible, to act rather as the 
mediator than the judge. The probability is, that while 
the church held on as a body a steady and uniform 
course, the controversy about trifles such as these would 
have passed away, and in fifty years they would have 
been as little thought of as they are thought of now. 

* The Church History of Britain, Book ix. p. 7-21. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



19 



And even the higher matters, the Sabbatical question, 
the Liturgical question, the Episcopal question, and the 
Calvinian question, — if where the authority lay there had 
been moderation and forbearance without any compro- 
mise of important principle, though in a community like 
that of Englishmen, who were well described by Poly- 
dore a century before as the most religious nation upon 
earth, and who possessed the freedom which the Re- 
formation rightly or wrongly understood was supposed 
to give to private opinion in matters of religion, there 
could never have been an entire agreement, — the aggra- 
vation which religious difference gave to the political 
struggle might have been avoided. 

It is, indeed, always the wisdom of the party in whom 
the power is vested to use it with extreme moderation, 
and to leave to the weaker party to vent itself in intem- 
perate language and ineffectual efforts. There certainly 
was no provocation wanting on the part of the Puritans. 
In fact, there was action and reaction, irritation and 
counter-irritation, in the whole contest of the reigns of 
James and Charles. But it seems to have been a great 
mistake in the policy of those who undertook the ad- 
ministration of ecclesiastical affairs, to introduce new 
and vexatious provisions, things directly opposed to the 
prejudices of the Puritans, and which could be regarded 
by them in no other light than as so much insult added 
to the injury they were receiving. King James, in the 
fifteenth year of his reign, passed through Lancashire, 
and having <£ observed that the precise ministers and 
magistrates there hindered the people from their Sun- 
day sports, by which occasion was given to the Papists 
to represent the reformed religion as opposed to all 
honest mirth and recreation," put forth a declaration 
that " his good people should no longer be disturbed in 
their amusements after divine service, such as dancing, 
archery, leaping, vaulting; nor from having may-games, 
Whitsun-ales, or morris -dances, and setting up of may- 
poles, so as the same be had in due and convenient 

c 2 



20 



THE LIFE OF 



time, without impediment or let of divine service ; and 
that women should have leave to carry rushes to the 
church for the decoring of it according to their old cus- 
tom^." This was revived by King Charles the First in 
the ninth year of his reign. Few now would defend 
the principle of this declaration ; but it was an unneces- 
sary irritation of the other party, while it gave no real 
strength to the church or state. It was, moreover, in the 
eyes of the deeply religious, at variance with a direct 
divine command ; for, taught to look to the Scriptures 
for the rule of their religious practice, they had not any 
well-considered principles on which to determine what 
divine injunctions are limited and temporary, and what 
universal and permanent. As to the question, what 
constitutes a day ; whether it is from midnight to mid- 
night, or from the beginning of evening to the beginning 
of the next, — the most active of the Puritans would 
probably leave such nice distinctions to the judgment of 
the antiquaries of the timef . 

The Arminian question, and the countenance given 
to the Arminian side in the controversy concerning the 
doctrine of the Church of England, were also very dis- 
tasteful to the Puritans ; who, though thinking much 
more of strictness and holiness of life than of any par- 
ticular interpretation of the doctrinal portions of the 
scriptures, were yet inclined to what is called Calvinism : 
and Laud, the great patron of the moderate view of the 

* Fuller, Church History, Book x. p. 24, where also are the re- 
marks upon it of that good, sensible and kind-hearted man. 

f The Puritans considered things lawful on other days not lawful 
on the afternoon of Saturday. Rothwell, a Bolton man, was re- 
proved by Midgley, the vicar of Rochdale, for playing at bowls on 
a Saturday afternoon, and the reproof was so mixed with exhorta- 
tion and warning that he became from that time a deeply religious 
person, and soon a most zealous minister. There is an account of 
his life by Stanley Gower, full of remarkable particulars. Within 
my own remembrance, in the families who descended from the old 
Puritans, there was a kind of sanctity thrown over the evening of 
Saturday. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



21 



doctrine of the articles, owed his death as much to this 
as to his strong assertion of episcopal authority and 
the support he gave to the royal prerogative. Here 
was a substantial subject of controversy ; but Laud irri- 
tated the Puritans by an uncalled-for multiplication of 
ceremonies, by wishing to make the services of the En- 
glish church more ornate than they had been left by 
the Reformers, and by introducing practices which were 
deemed by the religious party superstitious, and, in the 
loose way in which they applied the word, idolatrous. 
To suppose that such men as the Puritans could be 
won over by what they deemed irreligious vanities, or 
that a powerful religious party could be raised on such 
a basis, was to show but little knowledge of the Puritan 
character, or of the common principles of human na- 
ture. There were also acts in the case of particular 
persons of a severity which the public feeling did not 
sanction. 

There is indeed a natural and honest indignation 
which rises in every mind not greatly prejudiced, at every 
act of heavy punishment, where the offence has arisen 
but out of a regard to the full discharge of every duty 
towards God, whether it approve the judgment of what 
is so required, or deem it but the erroneous conclu- 
sion of a well-intentioned but ill-instructed mind. Such 
acts may be but the result of Catholic or Protestant zeal 
against what is deemed dangerous error, but they are 
felt by most persons now to be opposed to the dictates 
of humanity, and to be unbefitting the weak and fallible 
nature of man. 

Richard Heywood, the father of Mr. Heywood, was 
brought up to the business of the country, and became 
in the course of his life a considerable merchant, as mer- 
chants then were, and entered into various speculations, 
in which for a time he was very successful. He was a 
man of talent and enterprise, decided in his purposes, 
and through the whole period of his varied life emi- 
nently a religious man. The seed was first sown by 



22 



THE LIFE OF 



his mother, who, while his father was inattentive and 
reluctant, was accustomed to take him with her to at- 
tend the preaching of Mr. Huhbert. At the age of 
nineteen he entered a society of young men who "main- 
tained days and duties of fasting and prayer, conference 
and other Christian exercises." In 1615 he married 
Alice Critchlaw of Longworth, near Walmesley Chapel. 

Mr. Heywood says nothing of his mother's father, 
but speaks of the eminent piety of his grandmother 
Critchlaw. There were also two brothers of Mrs. Hey- 
wood, older than herself, who were remarkable for their 
religious zeal. As to herself, she was nineteen before she 
had received any strong religious impression. When 
it began to be felt, it produced very unfortunate effects : 
I give the very words in which Mr. Heywood describes 
them, that there maybe no misapprehension: — "She 
lived two full years in self-lamenting plight, at the next 
door to despair, still suffering God's terrors and refu- 
sing to be comforted. She thought her condition with- 
out parallel, and far worse than ever any body's else was, 
and that there was no hope of mercy for so vile a sin- 
ner." What could she have done to afford a reasonable 
ground for apprehensions such as these ? What is there 
in the teaching of Jesus, to lead a young and innocent 
girl, whose utmost fault was perhaps some little excess 
of gaiety of heart, to entertain thoughts such as these ? 
It was the preaching of Mr. Hill # , the minister on whose 
services the family were accustomed to attend, which 

* This Mr. Hill, the minister at Walmesley Chapel, is the same, 
I believe, with Mr, Joshua Hill, minister afterwards of Bramley 
Chapel, near Leeds, where he died only a few hours before a sum- 
mons reached his house to appear in the Archbishop's Court to an- 
swer a charge for not wearing the surplice, and other acts of Puri- 
tan nonconformity. Calamy, Account, p. 81 ; and Due. Leod., 
Whitaker's Edition, p. 209. He died in 1636, leaving a son, Joseph 
Hill, some time Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, a non- 
conformist under the Uniformity Act, who spent the greater part of 
his subsequent life in Holland, author of the well-known edition of 
Schrevelius. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



23 



brought her into this state. But he who had wounded 
wanted the power to heal, and her friends called in the 
assistance of Mr. Horrocks, a neighbouring minister, 
" whose voice in those days/' says Mr. Hey wood, " was 
an oracle." Yet what a spiritual adviser must he have 
been, if what Mr. Hey wood further says is literally 
true, that he taught this timid and innocent creature to 
compare herself with David when overwhelmed with a 
sense of the guilt he had contracted # ! The cloud, 
however, at length passed away. As it had gathered 
under preaching, so by preaching it was dispersed. She 
heard a sermon from the text in the Canticles, " My 
beloved is mine and I am his." From that day she be- 
came composed and cheerful ; and mindful of the happy 
change which it had produced in her, when near her 
end, she directed that the minister who preached at her 
funeral should be requested to take those words as the 
text of his discourse. 

Mr. Horrocks preached the nuptial sermon, for no 

* It was no singular case. If the reader wish to see a parallel 
instance, in which there are numerous afflictive details, let him read 
the printed Life of Mrs. Drake, the lady by whom Shardeloes came 
to that family. In Barksdale's ' Memorials ' is also an account of a 
case precisely similar. In fact, it grew out of the theory of Christ- 
ianity which the Puritans countenanced. I transcribe from Barks- 
dale the manner in which the notion was encountered by a seusible 
man of the time : — " He called her into his private chamber, and 
with a stern countenance said thus ; ' Thou thinkest God has no 
mercy for thee, but will surely damn thee : come on, then ; blas- 
pheme thou God.' The daughter was amazed at this command of 
her father ; and when he still pressed her to try her, fell down at his 
feet, and cried out, ' Though you be my father, yet I dare not, at 
your command, sin against my God : I dare not blaspheme his holy 
name.' ' Thou fool,' said the father, with tears in his eyes, ' and 
canst thou think that that God whom thou fearest to displease, 
whom thou darest not sin against, can be so cruel as to damn thee ? 
Avoid Satan.' The poor daughter received comfort presently, and 
the good father was overjoyed." — p. 142. It appears again in the 
religious biography of the Methodists of the last century. The re- 
semblance of the case of Sir Richard Hill, as described by himself, 
to this of Mrs. Hey wood, is most striking. See the 'Life' of him by 
the Rev. Edwin Sydney. 



24 



THE LIFE OF 



opportunity of preaching was in those days neglected. 
It was an early marriage, particularly on the part of the 
husband. They had many discouragements and diffi- 
culties in the first years of their married life. He had 
incautiously become responsible for the engagements of 
persons not named : this exposed him to great danger, 
and he was sometimes obliged to fly. The family at 
this period appear to have suffered great hardships. 
They retired for a year to the Water-side, as to a place 
in which they might live in secresy and security. Mr. 
Heywood marks the year of his own birth, 1630, as the 
time when brighter prospects began to dawn in his 
father's house. He was then relieved from his difficul- 
ties ; he opened correspondences with London ; he was 
successful in his connections there, and might be said 
to be growing wealthy ; he bought land and built 
houses out of the profits of his business ; he sunk 
coal-pits at Little Lever , established a fulling-mill and 
a paper-mill, which latter cost him £200. There were 
more than twenty-five years of commercial prosperity ; in 
the course of which he brought up two sons at the Univer- 
sity, gave fortunes with his four daughters, and bore 
with little injury the extravagance of his eldest and 
youngest sons. This prosperity lasted till all the child- 
ren of his first marriage were grown up, and the two 
scholars of the family were settled in the ministry. As 
life declined, misfortune again pressed upon him. " I 
must confess," says his son, " it is matter of great ad- 
miration to me to consider what an estate God gave my 
father that he might accomplish those works for the 
education of his children and for training up my good 
brother and me at the University, and for doing God 
service in his church ; and when he had done that work 
which he gave it him for, took it quite from him again." 
I shall have occasion to recur to this change hereafter. 
At present it is sufficient to observe concerning the tem- 
poral fortunes of the father of Mr. Heywood, that he 
lived to the year 1671, and that when he died there was 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



25 



inscribed on his grave-stone in the church-yard of Bol- 
ton, " There the weary be at rest !" 

In either fortune, religion was a predominant princi- 
ple or sentiment in his mind. We have at present to 
speak of the family in the days of its prosperity, and 
now more particularly of the mother. She enjoyed the 
full tide of the family's prosperity, dying before the evil 
days returned ; and she seems to have been deserving 
of the favours which were so copiously shed upon their 
dwelling by the kind and religious use which she made 
of them. I give her character in the very words of her 
son: — " She was very kind to her poor neighbours ; 
paid for the schooling of many poor children ; a great 
lover of peace ; when people quarreled, she used to fall 
upon them with plain downright homely rhetoric and 
scripture grounds, that few had power to deny her re- 
quest. She was a great lover of ministers ; rejoiced ex- 
ceedingly that she had two sons brought up to that ho- 
nourable office : a reverend divine used to call her the 
Mother of the Clergy. She was the centre of news for 
knowing the time and place of week-day sermons; kept 
conferences and private fasts ; an irreconcilable enemy 
to the bishops' government, she did confidently believe 
that she must see their downfall many years before they 
came down. She was much rejoiced at the calling, 
confirming and success of the parliament in 1641 ; at 
the taking of the Covenant, and any beginning of re- 
formation. Having obtained leave of officers, she 
showed her forwardness in demolishing relics of super- 
stition." What can this mean, but, that like the French 
wife of Whittingham, the Dean of Durham, who burnt 
in her fire the beautiful and venerable banner of Saint 
Cuthbert, under whose shade the English army had so 
often driven back an invading enemy, she destroyed 
what still remained of the works of ancient art in the 
church of Bolton and the chapels around ? Yet Mrs. 
Heywood had some reverence for history and antiquity ; 
for " she did recount, and cause to be written fair over, 



26 



THE LIFE OF 



a great number of the national mercies and admirable 
deliverances, to excite a present thankfulness and to be 
a memorial to succeeding ages. When the chapels in 
the neighbourhood were vacant, she used every means 
in her power to procure the settlement of pious minis- 
ters in them. The very last day she spent at Bolton, 
and the very last work she did in Lancashire, was to 
exert herself to bring such a minister to the chapel in 
Ains worth, having succeeded in getting together a meet- 
ing of ministers and of some of the people to consult 
about it, which was the only means to accomplish the 
end." We have few sketches of the character of the 
private puritan woman so distinct and minute as this. 

She had the principal share in the religious education 
of her children. With such a mother, when the cares 
of the world or the vanities of life did not greatly inter- 
pose to turn the current of their thoughts, what could 
be the result, but that the religious sentiment would be 
deeply engrafted and would appear in actions, its natural 
fruits ? But we see that she had entered fully into the 
opinions and prejudices of the party. What could ensue, 
but that these also would be communicated to her chil- 
dren, and would greatly influence the form and colour 
of their religious practice ? The fact which her son re- 
lates, that she destroyed the works of superstition in the 
ecclesiastical edifices of the neighbourhood, shows that 
she must have gone to the full extent both of the opi- 
nions and feelings of her party. 

I cannot forbear making a few remarks on this sub- 
ject. The old ecclesiastical edifices of England are still 
beyond all comparison the most beautiful and interesting 
objects in our beautiful island ; yet we see them, even 
those which we think the least injured, but in their 
ruins, despoiled of their choicest ornaments of painting 
and sculpture, those which made them worthy what Hey- 
lyn says of them, that they were ' ' before the Reforma- 
tion exquisite It is a popular notion, that this work 
* Microcosmus, 4to, 1625, p. 463. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



27 



of destruction is to be attributed to the Puritans. In an 
extended sense of the word Puritan, it is so ; but if by 
Puritan is meant that section of the English church 
which acquired the name towards the close of the reign 
of Elizabeth, it seems that the popular opinion is in 
error. Some attention to this question, and a close 
examination of many of these edifices, has convinced me 
that the great work of destruction must have been com- 
mitted in the very early periods of the Reformation, and 
that it was but little that was left for the Dowsings and 
others of the age of triumphant Puritanism to do # . The 
most exquisitely beautiful portions of the churches were 
the chantries, which usually contained the effigies of the 
founders, and a richly ornamented altar ; and the win- 
dows were usually composed of ' storied glass.' These 
became useless, and were judged to be haunts of super- 
stition, as soon as the act of the First of Edward the 
Sixth gave all the revenues by which they were supported 
to the king, when they would fall into neglect. 

If the destruction of these works lies less at the door 
of the Puritans, usually so called, than of their fathers, 
the zealots of the Reformation, still it is evident they 
came in the rear of the work, and the principle was in 
both cases the same. And I cannot forbear from add- 
ing, that in a step such as this, Mrs. Hey wood was pro- 
ceeding beyond what either her station or her intelligence 
could justify. She was not only depriving many of her 
neighbours of what were agreeable and edifying objects 
of contemplation, and posterity of valuable memorials of 
past ages, but she was also doing great violence to the 
feelings of many around her f . 

* Weever's work, the Antient Funeral Monuments, which was pub- 
lished as early as 1631, shows distinctly that the chief spoliation had 
been committed in the early years of the Reformation. 

t She was not without examples of the same feeling and mode of 
action. Mr. Bruen, who came from Stapleford in Cheshire to attend 
the Lecture at Manchester, a gentleman of ancient family, actually 
destroyed the painted glass in the windows of his own chapel in the 
church of Tarvin. His biographer, a Lancashire minister, thus speaks 



28 



i 

THE LIFE OF 



We turn to a more agreeable subject, the care which 
she took in the education of her son. 

of the act : — " Finding in the church of Tarvin, in his own chapel, 
which of ancient right did appertain unto him and his family, many- 
superstitious images and idolatrous pictures in the painted windows, 
and they so thick and dark, that there was, as he himself saith, scarce 
the breadth of a groat of white glass amongst them ; he, knowing by 
the truth of God, that though the Papists will have images to be lay- 
men's books, yet they teach no other lessons but of lies, nor any 
doctrine but that of vanities to them that profess to learn by them ; 
and considering that these dumb and dark images by their painted 
coats and colours did both darken the light of the Church and ob- 
scure the brightness of the Gospel, he presently took order to pull 
down all these painted puppets and popish idols, in a warrantable 
and peaceable manner ; and of his own cost and charge, repaired the 
breaches and beautified the windows with white and bright glass 
again." 

We are not told what the subjects of these paintings were ; pos- 
sibly figures of his own ancestry, or of good men in times long past, 
But we may extract from Prynne's burlesque account, what the 
paintings were in the church of Saint Edmund at Salisbury, which 
the recorder of the time, an over zealous man, broke to pieces, for 
which act he was very justly punished by the Star- Chamber. It is 
clear that there the several compartments presented the six days' work 
of creation, and the rest of the sabbath ; to which no more rational 
objection could be made, than to the reading in the church the vivid 
delineations of the same work by the hand of Moses. 

I find a reason for destroying the painted glass, which few would 
have suspected, in a story related by Mr. Heywood : — "Dr. Uly was 
preacher in Essex, and in the beginning of the Long Parliament was 
accused before a committee of much superstition. They produced 
and laid upon the table before them a curious surplice with a cross 
and glorious workmanship in the breast. It was inquired of the 
churchwardens, who put them on to make it ? They said, Dr. Uly, 
who at last confessed that he made it after a pattern in the church 
window, and wept much, saying, 'Tis true indeed I have been too 
zealous for the ceremonies." How really harmless everything of 
the kind is, and how exquisitely beautiful, is felt in the Minster at 
York, where the rich painted glass was saved in the civil wars by 
the care of a Puritan, of better taste than the rest, one of the Lords 
Fairfax, either Ferdinando or Thomas. It feeds no superstition. 

But little has been spared in comparison with what was destroyed ; 
sculptures, paintings, embroidery, goldsmiths' work, illuminated ma- 
nuscripts ; not to mention the edifices themselves in which these 
things were preserved, splendid monuments of the architectural taste 
and skill of ages ignorantty called dark. Can mischief of any kind 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



29 



Mr. Heywood was her third son and fifth child : one 
son died in his infancy. He was a nonconformist from 
his cradle ; for at his baptism in the church of Bolton 
on the loth of March, 1630 # , which he kept as his 
birthday, the day of his birth having been forgotten, he 
was not signed as usual with the sign of the cross. Old 
Adam Hulton, a brother of his grandmother, was one 
of his godfathers. 

Mrs. Andrews, of Little Lever Hall, the principal per- 
son of the village f , was his godmother. She held him 
at the font ; and as soon as Mr. Gregg, the vicar, had 
pronounced the words, " I baptize thee in the name of 
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost," she 
stepped back with the express purpose of preventing the 
minister from making the sign over him, which Mr. 
Gregg himself was not over-forward to do J. Mr. Hey- 

really have lurked in things which " strike at the seat of beauty in 
the mind" as these do ? 

* There is a slight difficulty in determining whether this is to be 
understood of March 1629 or March 1630. The current of his life 
would rather lead us to consider it as meaning March 1629, but 1630 
was really the year. In the parish register of Halifax, in the entry 
of his marriage in April 1655, he is said to be aged twenty-five. In 
the epistle to his relations in Lancashire, prefixed to his treatise en- 
titled 'The Two Worlds,' which is dated December 30, 1699, he 
says that he is within a few days of the age of man — seventy years ; 
and in his diary, under March 15, 1666-7, he says, " this day thirty- 
seven years ago was I baptized;" and under March 15, 1701—2, 
" the day of my baptism at Bolton seventy-two years ago." A year 
it will be perceived is of some importance in the history of his outset 
in life. He began his ministry while exceedingly young. 

f She was the heiress of the Levers of Little Lever ; Hethe, the 
daughter of Thomas Lever, and the wife of Nicholas Andrews, a son 
of William Andrews of Twy well in Northamptonshire. They had a 
son named John, who was living at Little Lever in 1664, when the 
Heralds held their visitation, and was then married to Jane, daughter 
of Robert Lever of Darcy Lever. To one of these families of Lever, 
probably the Levers of Little Lever, belonged Thomas Lever, one of 
the Protestant exiles in the reign of Queen Mary, who in the reign 
of Elizabeth was Master of Sherburn Hospital in Durham. 

X Mr. Gregg married one of the numerous family of Crompton 
of Brightmet, between whom and the Hey woods there was a double 
connexion ; one of Mr. Heywood's sisters having married Thomas 



30 



THE LIFE OF 



wood records his approval of what she did ; looking, he 
says, upon the ceremony as not grounded upon the word 
of God. He regarded the act also as " possibly a pro- 
vidential presage of his becoming a nonconformist mi- 
nister." He speaks also with satisfaction of " the great 
number of faithful witnesses who were present at his 
admission into infant church-membership, who prayed 
for him, and into whose number he was immediately 
entertained." The name of Oliver was first given him 
by the women who stood by at his birth, out of respect 
to the memory of his grandfather*, then lately deceased ; 
and it was confirmed to him by Mr. Gregg at his bap- 
tism. 

The description which Mr. Heywood has left of his 
natural disposition and his childish practices is conceived 
in a spirit of self-abasement, in which he, in common 
with the religious party to whom he belonged, was fond 
of indulging. What could there have been in him so 
different from what is seen in children in general to jus- 
tify such an expression as this ? — " When I was a child 
I spake as a child, yea, rather like a devil incarnate. 
Oh, the desperate wickedness of my deceitful heart ! " 
It may be concluded, however, that he had been sub- 
jected to the influence of evil example, and that all that 

Crompton of that place, and Mr. Heywood himself having married 
to his second wife Abigail Crompton, a younger sister of Mrs. Gregg. 
The vicar of Bolton was of the Puritan family of Gregg of Chester 
and afterwards of Hop wood Hall in Lancashire, who are now repre- 
sented by the family of Gregg-Hopwood. 

* There had been an Oliver Heywood before the time of his 
grandfather ; and what is remarkable, he was a person zealous in his 
way of religion, as his namesakes were in theirs. He was a Catho- 
lic priest, and his name is preserved in consequence of his apprehen- 
sion in the year 1574, at the house of Lady Guldeford in London, 
when present at the celebration of mass. I do not know that he 
was a Lancashire man, but there is a slight probability that he might 
be so, arising out of the circumstance that there Was arrested at the 
same time a gentlewoman of the Countess of Derby. See an ac- 
count of the affair in Strype, Annals, 8vo, 1824, vol. ii. part i. p. 
497. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



31 



had been done for their moral and religious improvement 
had not banished profaneness of speech from amongst 
the children of Little Lever. 

That he was " backward to good exercises" is an- 
other confession in his catalogue of infantine delinquen- 
cies. In this he may be believed and excused. The 
wonder rather is, that any children could have been 
brought to fall in with the strictness of the Puritan 
discipline, or to endure the tedious, and, as it now ap- 
pears, uninteresting discourses and the longsome prayers 
at which day by day they were required to be present. 
That many young children were brought to conform to 
such a mode of life, and even to enter with interested 
minds into the domestic services of the Puritan families 
of those times, is one of the most striking instances of 
what may be done with the human mind when it is 
taken early, with the intention of bending it in a parti- 
cular direction. Mr. Heywood cannot have remembered 
a time when the exercises to which he was backward 
were not spoken of in his father's house as the appointed 
and essential means of obtaining the divine favour and 
final salvation. At a very early age his mother was ac- 
customed to instruct him " in the deep points of divinity, 
the fall in Adam, the corruption of our nature, subjec- 
tion to the curse, redemption by Christ, the necessity 
of regeneration, the immortality and worth of the soul, 
the weight and concernment of eternity." The book 
which she chiefly used in the religious instruction of her 
children was Mr. Ball's Catechism # , which he learned 
by heart. This was before the Assembly of Divines had 

* This was a book in great repute in the Puritan families, super- 
seded by the Assembly's Catechism. Of John Ball, the author of 
it, there is some account in the ' Athenae,' a little tinged with the 
prejudices of the author of that work. He was a minister at Whit- 
more, near Newcastle-under-line, of great note in his day, now for- 
gotten. Mr. Newcome, of Manchester, in his Life of Mr. John 
Machin, who was a pupil of Mr. Ball's, calls him " that famous 
Mr. John Ball of Whitmore, who brought up several youth in 
school-learning, together with his own son." 12mo, 1671, p. 2. 



32 



THE LIFE OF 



published their Catechism. It was her practice also to 
set her children to pray in the family while they were 
very young. They were also present at all the religious 
conferences, and the days of fasting and prayer and 
thanksgiving, that were kept at his father's house. His 
mother frequently took him to hear the most famous 
preachers in the country around ; Mr. Horrocks of 
Dean, Mr. Harrison of Walmesley Chapel, and Mr. 
Johnson of Ellenbrook. Sometimes she would take 
him a longer journey to hear Mr. Angier of Denton. 
But in those days listening to a sermon of three hours' 
continuance was not all with which the attention of 
youth was taxed. He was required to carry home ' the 
minister's method,' that is the heads and particulars of 
the discourse. He made notes of them as soon as he 
was able to write, at the time of delivery ; and he assures 
us, that when himself a preacher^ he found the use of the 
notes which he had made of the discourses of famous 
ministers whom he heard in his youth. 

His father had collected a valuable library of practical 
divinity and expository theology. He had the works of 
Luther and Calvin in English, and the writings of Per- 
kins, Preston, and Sibbes, the favourite English authors 
with the Puritans who lived before the wars. The books 
were bought by him on his visits to London when he 
went on his commercial affairs. 

As the times grew darker, the religious exercises at 
his father's house were more frequent, and the spirit in 
which they were conducted more fervid. These meet- 
ings exposed those who frequented them to suspicion in 
the minds of such persons as the Earl of Derby and his 
son, and exposed them also to ecclesiastical censures : 
so that they were held with a certain degree of caution ; 
and it was the custom to place a boy in the " entry" 
which led to the door of his father's house, whose busi- 
ness it was to sing and shout to deaden the sound of the 
praying within. Mr. Hey wood tells us that he had 
himself been so employed : "I can well remember that, 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



33 



when at my father's house they had a private fast when 
I was a child, they set me a singing about the door, 
that when the apparitor came he might not hear them 
pray." This was just before the civil war began in 
earnest. " Many days of prayer have I known my 
father keep among God's people : yea, I remember a 
whole night wherein he, Dr. Bradshaw, Adam Fearni- 
side, Thomas Crompton, and several more excellent men, 
did pray all night in a parlour at Ralph Whittal's^, as 
I remember upon occasion of King Charles the First 
demanding the five members of the House of Commons. 
Such a night of prayers, tears and groans I was never 
present at in all my life : the case was extraordinary, and 
the work extraordinary." This is a valuable anecdote, 
and we have reason to regret that it did not enter more 
into Mr. Fleywood's plan to record the impression made 
on a private family like his, living remote from London, 
by the more important events as they occurred in that 
eventful period. The noble historian of those times has 
described in his vivid and masterly manner the effect 
produced by this rash step within the walls of the city 
and in the counties near the metropolis, into which 
" seditious ministers," as he calls them, were imme- 
diately despatched ; but here we see that the alarm was 
felt at the extremity of the kingdom, and led to exercises 
which tended to gird up the minds of the disaffected for 
the conflict that was impending. The Critchlawsf were 

* Meetings for prayer which endured for the whole night were no 
very uncommon occurrence in the Puritan families of those times. 
" A most unwearied man he was in religious duties, and was never 
observed to give over, though sometimes on special occasions they 
continued all night therein. After one of these days of special com- 
munion with God, he retired with two or three beloved friends in 
private, and there moved each of them to name some one thing they 
would chiefly desire of the Lord, and so each of them prayed over 
all those particulars that were cast in." — Newcome's Life ofMachin, 
p. 47. 

f There were four of them, William, Francis* Hugh, and Ralph. 
William lived at Bolton, and died of wounds received in the civil 
wars. Francis also lived at Bolton. When very young, old Oliver 

D 



34 



THE LIFE OF 



among the most earnest at these private meetings. They 
practised, if they may not rather be said to have devised, 
a peculiar method of prayer. One spent a portion of 
time previously agreed upon in confessing sin ; an- 
other, the like portion in entreating personal mercies ; 
another, public mercies ; another, in thanksgiving. Fran- 
cis, the favourite uncle, and he who next to his parents 
had the most to do in the religious education of Mr. 
Heywood, was supposed to be the most effectual in 
prayer. It is not surprising, considering how excited 
was the Puritan mind by the long series of oppressive 
acts to which the party had been subjected, the appre- 
hensions which were entertained of still darker days, and 
the undefined and not very unreasonable alarm in which 
they were placed by the massacre in Ireland, that we 
trace in the record of these midnight devotions supposed 
answers to prayer, or manifestations which were con- 
strued into evidences of special attention being given to 
their devotions. " In the parlour of my father's house 
at a private fast, many Christians being present, when 
my uncle Francis was at prayer, wonderfully carried out 
in affection and strong wrestlings, all on a sudden a 
bright shining light, far brighter than the sun, shone in 
the room. It dazzled and astonished them. My uncle 

Heywood after his conversion is reported to have said of him to his 
sons, " That lad that comes out of the Moors has more zeal than 
you all." " He was my intimate dear friend : I scarce ever was in 
his company without sensible advantage. He was very useful in 
discourse, especially in asking pertinent and profitable questions 
with which he was furnished abundantly in his younger days in 
those frequent conferences they maintained. He was indeed a very 
judicious, solid, experienced Christian ; a Mnason, an old disciple 
long trained in the school of Christ." Such is the character which 
his nephew gives of him. Hugh lived very much at Shrewsbury : 
he had not the same amount of zeal as his elder brothers. Ralph, 
the youngest, " was the most proper witty man of them all." He 
married a daughter of Mr. Cross, the minister at the church in 
Friday Street, London, and settled at Wrexham, where he got a 
great estate, and in the Oliverian times was a justice of the peace ;— - 
" a godly man, though possibly not much better for his greatness, yet 
I believe a savour of godliness abode on his heart to his dying day." 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



35 



gave over. They rose off their knees ; were amazed ; 
said nothing, but looked one upon another : heard no 
voice. It continued about a quarter of an hour, as long 
as one might have gone to the further side of the Little 
Meadow and back again, as Luke Hoyle hath told me, 
who was then present. This was a little before the wars 
in the heat and height of the bishops' tyranny over 
godly ministers." The story is deficient in particularity. 
It does not even appear whether it were day or night. 
If at night it was doubtless the northern aurora, pecu- 
liarly vivid, then rarely seen in England # . 

Mr. Heywood was from twelve to sixteen when the 
civil wars were at their height. Again I say with re- 
gret that his notices of the occurrences of the time are 
few. Of the resistance which the inhabitants of Man- 
chester made to the entrance of the Earl of Derby into 
their town, he takes no notice, nor of the assistance 
which the people of Bolton sent them at that time of 
danger. No where did the people enter into the spirit 
of the conflict with more earnestness than at those two 
places. The Cavaliers called Bolton the Geneva of Lan- 
cashire. Even of the attack which Prince Rupert and 
the Earl of Derby made upon that town, when many of 
his friends and acquaintance must have fallen, I find no 

* That the aurora borealis did appear about the beginning of the 
civil wars to heighten the excitement of the time, we have direct 
evidence from Mr. Heywood. — " On Thursday night, March 2, 
1664-5, some company came to my house, and as they came they 
saw a strange naming northward. One said it was just like that 
streaming that she saw above twenty years ago, immediately before 
the Scotch wars, and she never saw any except that. We all went 
out to look at it. It was dark night, something stormy, and in 
the north we saw a bright place which was constantly light, but 
sometimes far brighter, and looked always far and wide in the air. 
It was so bright sometimes that we might have seen anything very 
clearly on the ground. It shone in at the windows, and was in my 
apprehension very formidable to behold." An appearance of these 
lights about fifty years after is sometimes spoken of as the first ap- 
pearance of them in England. 

D 2 



36 



THE LIFE OF 



memorials in any of his writings which remain. Yet 
his testimony would have had an historical value in 
the balance of probabilities in the discordant accounts. 
When the most favourable construction is put upon the 
conduct of the prince and the earl, it must be allowed 
that severities were used to a prostrate foe at which both 
English and Christian feeling revolts. It is said that 
1800 persons were put to the sword^. The 28th of 
May was long remembered by the people of Bolton, and 
is probably not yet forgotten. The Earl of Derby was 
the first person who entered the town. It was as an 
atonement for the blood needlessly shed on this occa- 
sion, that when the earl fell into the hands of his ene- 
mies after the battle of Worcester, and was sentenced to 
death, execution was done upon him in the market-place 
at Bolton. 

The death of his uncle, William Critchlaw, is almost 
the only civil war anecdote which Mr. Hey wood relates. 
" Though he was not a soldier, yet when he heard of a 
fight nigh at hand, or a town to be taken by the parlia- 
ment army, he used to take his musket and run to the 
army, and be present in any hazardous expedition. This 
cost him his life : for when Colonel Holland and Colonel 
Ashton with their regiments went to take Wigan, though 
the tow T n was taken, yet this zealous champion got shot 
into the shoulder, and another bullet was in the thigh. 
He was brought to his daughter's at Bolton, and there 
about a fortnight after died of those wounds, but with 
invincible courage, uttering many gracious expressions 
near his end. Indeed he was of an undaunted spirit ; 

* This appears to be an exaggerated statement. According to a 
pamphlet of the time, " penned by an Eye-witness," and in which, 
to judge from the terms of the title there would probably be no 
softening of the harshness of the treatment which the town received, 
' An Exact Relation of the bloody and barbarous massacre at Bolton 
in the Moors in Lancashire' (published August 22, 1644), it is said 
that the number of the slain on both sides was " about 1200 or 1500 
in all." The pamphlet contains no particulars of interest. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



37 



having made his peace with God, and living in assured 
hope of heaven, he feared not death." 

Mr. Heywood's father was absent from England at 
the time of the attack on Bolton ; and the business on 
which he was gone shows the esteem in which he was 
held by his neighbours, and the influence he possessed 
in the religious concerns of the parish. Mr. Gregg, the 
vicar, died early in that year. Mr. Robert Pike, who 
had been an officiating minister in the town, had left 
Bolton and gone to reside in Holland, where he was 
minister of the English congregation at Rotterdam. It 
was the wish of the parish that Mr. Pike might be pre- 
vailed upon to return, and Mr. Hey wood was selected 
" as a man of judgment, capacity, and interest," to pro- 
ceed to Holland and negociate with him. He went ac- 
cordingly, and succeeded. He took the opportunity of 
visiting several other towns in Holland, and on landing 
at Hull he " was surprised with the astonishing tidings 
of Prince Rupert's taking Bolton, killing man, woman, 
and child, as the affair was represented to him." On 
his way home he passed through York, when he visited 
the field near the village of Marston where the great 
battle had been fought, and from which the bodies of 
the slain were not removed. On his return home he 
found that his own house at Little Lever had been full 
of alarm, and that his books were lost. His daughters 
had removed them out of the house, and placed them 
for security under a pile of wood. It was supposed that 
they were discovered by the soldiers and burnt. 



38 



THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER TIL 

EARLY RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS. PURITANS' ATTENTION TO THE EDU- . 

CATION OF THOSE INTENDED FOR THE MINISTRY.— MR. HEYWOOD's 

DESTINATION TO THAT OFFICE. HIS SCHOOL EDUCATION. METHOD 

PURSUED IN THE LANCASHIRE SCHOOLS. REMOVED TO CAMBRIDGE. 

PERSONS WITH WHOM MORE PARTICULARLY CONNECTED THERE, 

HILL, AKEHURST, BIRCHALL. STUDIES THERE. HIS PREFERENCE 

OF FOUR EMINENT PRACTICAL WRITERS, PERKINS, BOLTON, PRES- 
TON, AND SIBBES. MR. HAMMOND, THE CELEBRATED CAMBRIDGE 

PREACHER. JOLLIE, BENTLEY, NATHANIEL HEYWOOD, CONTEMPO- 
RARY WITH HIM AT CAMBRIDGE. MAJOR JAMES JOLLIE. LEAVES 

THE UNIVERSITY AND RETURNS INTO LANCASHIRE. 

The effects of such an education as Mr. Heywood re- 
ceived were very early manifest in anxious solicitude 
respecting his own state of acceptance with God. 
Speaking of the period of his life before he went to 
Cambridge, and apparently before he had reached his 
fifteenth year, he says, " How often did I think my 
state in some respects to be worse than that of birds 
and beasts, trees or stones ; because by sin I am subject 
to eternal misery, of which they are incapable ! Some- 
times I durst not pray, lest I should take God's name in 
vain ; and then by fits I had my inward troubles, fears, 
and doubts." He expatiates on this his state of mind 
in a somewhat oratorical manner, and it is needless to 
transcribe the whole ; but the conclusion at which he 
arrives is of some importance to the right understanding 
his character and history, namely, that there was no 
period of his life on which he was able to fix and to say 
" That then, in that very week or month, the work of 
conversion was completed in him." And when in after 
life he reflected on this period of his religious history, 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



39 



he says that he came to the same conclusion at which 
Baxter also arrived, " that God doth often make use of 
a religious education by natural parents as a means of 
first begetting converting grace ; and that if parents 
were faithful and skilful in those relative duties, God 
would own that work to so great an end ; and that 
public preaching of the word should be the more usual 
means of confirmation than conversion ." 

At the age of fourteen he began to receive the Lord's 
Supper in his parish church • and about the same time 
he entered a small society of young men who were ac- 
customed to meet together once a fortnight for religious 
conversation and prayer. 

It would seem from the account which has now been 
given as if nothing were attended to in the education 
bestowed on Mr. Heywood except the cultivation of the 
religious principle : but this was far from being the case. 

No doubt in the families of the Puritans the first and 
principal object of the parent was to create in the minds 
of children a deep and awful sense of the relation in 
which we stand to our Creator, and the responsibilities 
under which we receive the gift of life ; and this was 
much more an object and a business with them than in 
families less in earnest about these affairs, or more so- 
licitous about the things of time. But wherever the 
means were afforded of receiving the benefits of a good 
education of another kind, they were not backward to^ 
avail themselves of them ; so that some of the best 
scholars of the time came from the Puritan families, 
especially those learned in the writings of ancient and 
modern Christian divines. 

But where the destination was to the ministry, great 
pains were always bestowed on the cultivation of the 
intellectual powers, and on giving that instruction which 
should enable the future minister to read the sacred 
writings pure as they are delivered down to us, as well as 
the writings of the early fathers of the church. No mis- 
take is greater than to suppose that when we speak of 



40 



THE LIFE OF 



the Puritan minister we mean one who had zeal and 
piety without any tincture of learning. Their writings 
sufficiently prove the contrary. Only their learning was 
less prominent than their devotion and zeal. 

Mr. Heywood manifested at a very early period of his 
life what his parents interpreted into an inclination for 
the office of minister, and a presage of his success in 
that honourable character. I pass over a childish story 
or two in which this inclination was supposed to be in- 
dicated ; but what he relates of himself may be worthy 
preservation, that from the very earliest period to which 
his memory could ascend he had had a very reverent 
esteem of the ministry and those in it. As these indi- 
cations coincided with the secret wishes of his parents, 
and especially of his mother, it was very early deter- 
mined to prepare him for the ministry, and they sought 
out for him the best instruction which those parts of the 
country at that time afforded. But this, according to 
Mr. Heywood's own account, was not of the best quality. 
He was for a time at the public school at Bolton ; he 
was also a pupil of Mr. Rathband, who had undertaken 
to instruct youth when he was suspended from the mi- 
nistry by his diocesan. 

He was under the care of other tutors, for he tells 
us that he was " very much retarded in his learning by 
change of school and variety of masters, and the negli- 
gence of some of them nor was it till his family had 
found out a certain Mr. Rudal, who lived somewhere in 
the wild country about Horwich, that he found himself 
in a position in which his own application and diligence 
were wisely seconded and directed. He profited more, 
he says, under this master in one year than he had done 
in four elsewhere. His brother Nathaniel, three years 
and a half younger than himself, who was also destined 
for the university and the ministry, was under the same 
schoolmaster. I wish we could recover something more 
respecting him. It is evident that he was a useful and 
valuable man.. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



41 



It was here that Mr. Heywood must have laid that 
excellent foundation of grammar-learning which enabled 
him to speak and write the Latin language with fluency, 
if not with elegance, and that he must have read several 
of those ancient authors with whom we find him after- 
wards familiar. 

Mr. Heywood has given no account of the method 
pursued by his schoolmaster, or of the particular books 
which were placed in his hands. The curriculum was 
probably in no respect different from that of other 
schools of the time in which grammar-learning was 
taught ; but as this is a subject which seems now but 
imperfectly understood, I shall transcribe the account 
which another Lancashire minister, a friend of Mr. Hey- 
wood, has given of his own school-education in that 
county, at St. Helen's and Rainsford. 

" He received me when I was learning in As inprcs- 
senti and Cato; and instructed me, in prose, in Corderius, 
iEsop's Fables, Tully's Offices, Epistles and Orations, 
together with Aphthonius for Latin in prose ; and the 
Greek Grammar of Camden first, and Clenard after- 
wards, together with a Greek Catechism ; and lastly, the 
Greek Testament, for I proceeded no further with him : 
and for poetry, in Mantuan, Terence, Ovid's Epistles 
and Metamorphoses, Virgil and Horace. The Rhetorics 
he read to us were Susenbrotus first, and Talseus after- 
wards. My exercises were usually a piece of Latin, of 
which he himself dictated the English every day of the 
week save Thursdays and Saturdays ; and besides, some- 
what weekly, as I rose in ability, — first, dialogues in imi- 
tation of Corderius or Pueriles Confabulatiunculce ; then 
an epistle, in which T was to follow Cicero, though (alas !) 
at a great distance; then themes (as we called them), 
in the way of Aphthonius, consisting of many parts, and 
taking up one side of half a sheet pretty thickly written ; 
and, towards the latter end, good store of verses, most 
hexameters and pentameters, but some sapphics and 
alcaics. All that were presumedby their standing able 



42 THE LIFE OF 

to discourse in Latin were under a penalty if they either 
spoke English or broke Priscian's head ; but barbarous 
language, if not incongruous for grammar, had no pu- 
nishment but derision. These were the orders we were 
subject to at teaching hours." 

I am not acquainted with any account equally parti- 
cular with this of the mode pursued in schools in the 
reign of Charles the First, and am tempted to extend 
the notice which we have of the same person's studies 
when transferred to another master. 

" A new schoolmaster came to Rainsford that had 
the name of a very civil man and good teacher, and that 
not without cause. I confess as to great eminence of 
natural parts, and diligence in looking to our souls, T 
thought him inferior to his predecessor, and it was no 
small prejudice to me that the Popish gentry in the 
neighbourhood were so fond of him ; yet I believe he 
was a Protestant, and it was only his being a great Anti- 
Puritan (which that place never had before) that pro- 
bably was the reason they so highly valued him. What- 
ever was his opinion, he was an eminently able and di- 
ligent master. He had been brought up not only in 
a good school in Bolton, but after at the University a 
good season (I have heard five years), where, having a 
great affection to the Greek tongue and opportunity to 
hear the public professor, and to converse with other 
men, he had attained to a marvellous exactness in pro- 
nouncing it in the University manner, which till then I 
had not heard of. He was also skilful in the derivations 
of words, teaching us many that we could not find in any 
lexicon. Nor was he slight in examining us about the 
dialects not only in poets, but even in the Greek Testa- 
ment, wherein he made us observe the Hebraisms, Latin - 
isms, and idioms. He taught us also to make Greek 
exercises in prose and verse, and both in them and what 
we made in Latin he expected not only congruity, but 
elegancy. He spoke very good Latin to us in a constant 
way, put us to take out our lessons ourselves, and in 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



43 



examining them he stood not so much upon parsing (as 
they called it) or scanning of verses and proving them, 
to which he found us well enured, as upon rhetorical 
tropes and figures ; to fit us whereunto he removed us 
out of Taleeus into Farnaby, laughing at Susenbrotus as 
an old dull piece which called the tropes as well as the 
scheme by the name of figures. He was also very nota- 
ble at teaching us to observe all allusions in prophane 
authors to the sacred Scriptures, insomuch that any 
thing leaning that way should hardly pass his observa- 
tion. I remember very well, when we were upon the 
story of Deucalion's flood in Ovid's Metamorphoses, he 
took notice of these words, ' ubi nuper ararat,' as think- 
ing it a strange allusion (whether intended or accidental) 
to the mountain of Ararat upon which Noah's ark 
rested. He took a great deal of pains with me, especially 
in Homer's Odyssey^." 

Through such a course as this Mr. Heywood passed, 
and it is evident that thus an excellent foundation 
would be laid for the studies of the University f. 

On the 9th of July, 1647, he was admitted of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, and immediately w T ent to reside. 

When his father took leave of him, he left with him 
six special admonitions: (1.) to humble himself fre- 

* This long quotation is from a valuable piece of self-biography, 
the Life of Adam Martindale, which remains in manuscript of his 
own hand, in the Library of the British Museum. It is one of the 
Birch Manuscripts, No. 4239. Adam Martindale was a Puritan divine, 
six years older than Mr. Heywood, born at Prescot. Like Mr. Hey- 
wood, he refused to comply with the terms of the Act of Uniformity. 

t He mentions incidentally two persons who were his school- 
fellows, Mr. Thomas Isherwood, who was afterwards Vicar of Eccles, 
and whose death was supposed to be occasioned by intemperance. 
He fell from his horse into a shallow brook and was suffocated. 
Mr. William Hulme was another. He was afterwards a justice of 
the peace, and a great enemy of the Non-Conformists. His only 
son, Banaster Hulme, died when at school at Manchester, in conse- 
quence of a blow on the head in a quarrel with a schoolfellow. He 
was buried September 11, 1674, "the day," says Mr. Heywood, 
" of that unparalleled flood." 



44 



THE LIFE OF 



quently before God, and to do so at least every morn- 
ing and evening; (2.) to read the Scriptures diligently ; 
(3.) to keep a written record of his private meditations ; 
(4.) to take notes of the sermons which he heard; 
(5.) to keep steadily in view the thought how short is 
life ; and (6.) to maintain the just medium between 
too much solitariness and too much company. 

The University was at that time exactly what the Puri- 
tans wished it to be ; for the success of the Parliament 
had enabled the Puritan party to effect great changes 
both in the Church and the Universities. The Masters 
and Professors, who, however learned and qualified for 
the offices which they held, did not reach the Puritan 
standard in point of religion, had been removed from 
their places, and other persons had succeeded them who 
were distinguished as much by piety and religious zeal 
as by learning and skill in government. 

Dr. Thomas Hill, the Master of Trinity, had been 
recently appointed under the authority of Parliament. I 
find little respecting him in Mr. Heywood's papers ; but 
from other sources we derive the information that he was 
a person in very high esteem among the most zealous 
Puritans, a strenuous advocate of Calvinian views of the 
Christian doctrine, a diligent preacher in the chapel of 
his college, and who expounded the Scriptures there 
almost daily. One who studied in the college at the 
same time with Mr. Hey wood says, " he learned more 
of Christ in one year from Mr. Hill's plain and precious 
Christ-advancing preaching than he had all his time be- 
fore in the country." Dr. Hill would sometimes lay his 
hand upon his breast and say with emphasis, "Every 
Christian hath something here that will frame an argu- 
ment against Arminianism." 

He recommended Mr. Akehurst to Mr. Hey wood for 
his tutor. Of this Mr. Akehurst Mr. Heywood says, 
that "he was then a flourishing instrument, and was 
looked upon as the most pious and laborious in all the 
college." He marks the time, because afterwards Mr. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



45 



Akehurst degenerated, or, as Mr. Hey wood says, " grie- 
vously apostatized, becoming a common Quaker." But 
he retraced his steps, and became at last " a sober phy- 
sician in Surrey." On the whole the pupil was satisfied. 
" I must confess he was careful of me, enquired of me 
what company I was acquainted with, sometimes read 
lectures to us, prayed with us in his chamber every 
night, and had sometimes about thirty pupils, and, as T 
thought, was a gracious savoury Christian ; though I 
have often taken notice of his inconstancy, and being 
singular in differing from grave and sober divines, and 
pride, which was too visible in his apparel, gesture, and 
other outward tokens thereof." 

Mr. William Birchall, at that time sizer to the Master, 
was the person who led Mr. Hey wood to the selection 
of this college. He was afterwards a non-conforming 
minister. 

Mr. Heywood gives no particular account of the 
course of study pursued in his time at the University. 
It is natural in a writer of self-biography to pass over 
that which is common to many and familiarly known to 
his contemporaries ; but by this means we, in a remote 
generation, lose what would be valuable information, 
when the change of manners or the advancement of 
knowledge has brought about many alterations, so that 
the old modes, so far from being familiarly known, it is 
impossible perfectly to recover. 

Only two books have descended among Mr. Hey- 
wood's manuscript remains which can be regarded as 
books of college exercises or college amusements. One 
is a large abstract of that really good and useful book, 
the Itinerarium Totius Sacra Scriptures of that almost- 
forgotten writer, Henry Bunting. This manuscript is of 
more than 250 pages of close writing in his minute 
penmanship. The exercise was good, as giving a di- 
stinctness and exactness to his knowledge of sacred his- 
tory. The other is of a lighter character. It consists 
of (1.) a kind of theological common-place book ; (2.) a 



46 



THE LIFE OF 



complete transcript of the Horce Vaciva of John Hall, 
the youthful poet of St. John's, first published the year 
before Mr. Heywood went to the University ; (3.) the 
Antient History of the Septuagint, by J. Done; (4.) 
Selected and Choice Observations concerning the Twelve 
First Ceesars, by Edward Leigh; (5.) Some few Choice 
Observations collected out of " The Mirror that Flatters 
Not," by Le Sieur de la Serre ; and (6.) Some Observa- 
tions gathered out of Howell's Epistles. But we have 
no notes of lectures, nor any information of the nature 
of the theological lectures or of those in philosophy, 
which, however, Mr. Heywood attended, perhaps too 
indifferently. The principal studies of Cambridge in 
these times seem to have had no place there in the time 
of the Commonwealth. We have no traces at least of 
any thing like science in any thing that remains of Mr. 
Heywood. He pronounces a censure on himself for not 
applying more closely to the lectures in philosophy, in 
which natural philosophy may be included, prizing, as 
he says, learning above all sublunary exercises, and 
thinking that he might afterwards have been more useful 
had he improved his time better therein. He stood for 
a scholarship and failed. The failure was however partly, 
perhaps principally, owing to a severe illness of two 
months' continuance. What he further relates of himself 
may, however, have had something to do with his dis- 
appointment : " My time and thoughts were, more em- 
ployed in practical divinity ; and experimental truths were 
more vital and vivifical to my soul. I preferred Perkins, 
Bolton, Preston, Sibbes, far above Aristotle, Plato, Ma- 
girus, and Wendeton, though I despise no laborious 
authors in these subservient studies." This is a remark- 
able and highly characteristic acknowledgment, indicative 
of his future eminence as a preacher to the many. 

The time has been when the four names whom Mr. 
Heywood thus honourably mentions would at once call 
up distinct ideas of certain writings left by the men who 
bore them with their peculiar characteristics and pur- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



47 



poses. At present it may, perhaps without offence, be 
presumed that they will call up only certain vague no- 
tions of treatises in practical divinity which were once 
read and esteemed, So that it may not be improper to 
add, that they were the men who had succeeded to the 
practical writers of the unreformed Church, and to those 
who adapted the works of those writers to the use of 
the reformed ; men who lived when the Reformation 
controversy was in some measure over, and when there 
was a call for works in which the duties of men were 
explained and enforced on protestant principles, and the 
Christian consolations exhibited as the protestant can 
exhibit them. Their sera is from the middle of the reign 
of Elizabeth to almost the beginning of the civil wars, 
so that some of these writings were new books, when 
they were so eagerly read by Mr. Heywood. His own 
writings show how great an influence they had upon his 
mind. 

Perkins had been a famous preacher at Cambridge in 
the reign of Elizabeth. His works, partly controversial 
and partly experimental, make three folio volumes, 
though his life was short. Bolton was a Lancashire 
man, a soil fruitful in men of a devotional spirit. He 
studied at Oxford, where he was renowned for his great 
learning, but his attention was not particularly turned to 
divinity till he was thirty-four. His most celebrated 
writings are entitled, " Directions for Walking with 
God " Instructions for the right comforting Afflicted 
Consciences ;" " The Four Last Things." Preston was a 
celebrated tutor and preacher at Cambridge, who seems 
to have worn himself out in the work, dying in 1628, 
at the age of 4 1 . Richard Sibbes was also a Cambridge 
divine, Fellow and Master of a college and preacher in 
one of the churches. Six -and- twenty tracts are attri- 
buted to him, of which " The Bruised Reed" and " The 
Soul's Conflict" are remarkable for having the especial 
commendations of Richard Baxter and Isaac Walton, 
two different men, but both admirable in their way ; 



48 



THE LIFE OF 



Walton leaving copies of them in his will to his son and 
daughter. They are still highly valued hy religious 
minds. 

But there was at that time at Cambridge, a per- 
son who had probably a greater influence over Mr. 
Heywood than any other person living or dead. This 
was Mr. Samuel Hammond, the preacher at St. Giles'. 
His name occurs in the histories, where we have them, 
of almost every other divine who studied at Cambridge 
at the same time with Mr. Heywood. Dr. Calamy says 
of him, that he preached "with that pious zeal, pun- 
gency, and Christian experience, that from all parts of 
the town and from the most distant villages his useful 
ministry was attended on, and it was crowned with the 
conversion of some scores, I might have said hundreds, of 
scholars. It was the general opinion, that there was 
not a more convincing and successful minister at Cam- 
bridge from the time of Mr. Perkins than he # ." And 

* Account of the Ejected and Silenced Ministers in 1662. p. 499. 
— Mr. Hammond was a native of York, Fellow of Magdalene Col- 
lege at the time of which we speak. When he left Cambridge, 
he became Lecturer at St. Nicholas', in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 
where he was when silenced by the Act of Uniformity. But so 
eloquent a preacher did not long remain silent. The merchants of 
Hamburgh invited him thither to be their chaplain. He went. Dr. 
Calamy states that the company requiring a renewal of their charter, 
Lord Clarendon refused to pass it, unless they would consent to 
dismiss Mr. Hammond. This is an act which requires explanation : 
but Lord Clarendon, great man as he was, and yet the unrivalled 
master of the historic pen, was not superior to personal dislikes. 
There are some gross instances in his work of that basest species of 
defamation, the suppressio veri. As to Mr. Hammond, he was 
forced to leave Hamburgh. Fie wandered for a while in the North 
of Europe, going to Stockholm and Dantzick ; but in a short time 
he returned to England, and died at Hackney in 1666. Mr. Hey- 
wood saw him there a fortnight before his death. Such was the fate 
of one who had doubtless lighted a pure flame in many a youthful 
bosom. 

He married one of the Ogles of Northumberland, a Puritan family 
of eminence. The executor to his will was Ambrose Barnes, a mer- 
chant at Newcastle, an eminent Puritan of that town and a very re- 
markable man, who has left a large manuscript account of his own life 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



49 



with this agrees the testimony of Mr. Hey wood : — " I 
must confess my heart was many times very much affected 
under the ordinances at St. Giles's ; and I cannot but with 
thankfulness acknowledge Mr. Hammond a profitable 
instrument for much good to my soul. Though the work 
might be wrought before, yet I am sure that it was much 
revived, cleared, and many mistakes removed. Oh ! with 
what a frame of spirit have I come from that place ! I 
usually met with a suitable, searching word, and one 
that warmed my heart." 

Mr. Hey wood speaks also of " the ingenious and gra- 
cious scholars with whom he had intimate familiarity, 
and was much furthered by them in the ways of the 
Lord." With two of them he lived in intimate com- 
munication and friendship for the remainder of their 
lives, notwithstanding differences of judgment with them, 
agreeing, however, in refusing to comply with the terms 
of conformity proposed after the Restoration. These were 
Eli Bently and Thomas Jollie. The latter of them was at 
Trinity College some time before Mr. Hey wood. He 
was from the same neighbourhood, being the son of 
Major James Jollie, of Droilsden, in the parish of Man- 
chester, who held the obnoxious office of Provost-Marshal 
in the Parliament army in the county of Lancaster*. 

and opinions, full of valuable notices of men and events, and of a 
curious literature, such as would not be expected from a Newcastle 
merchant of those times. He gives an account of Mr. Hammond, who 
was his intimate friend. This manuscript, which is a large and thick 
folio, was lent to me many years ago by my venerable friend the 
Rev. William Turner, of Newcastle. It is now in the library of one 
of the literary societies of that town. Sir Cuthbert Sharp, among 
his many valuable contributions to the history of families and per- 
sons in Northumberland and Durham, has printed much of the bio- 
graphical information contained in this singularly curious volume. 

* Dr. Calamy gives a large account of Thomas Jollie, but does 
not name his father, who was a remarkable man, and the common 
ancestor of a large family in which there were many ministers, some 
of them of great eminence and usefulness, particularly his grandson, 
Timothy Jollie, who was the minister of the Non- Conformists at 
Sheffield, and the tutor in an academy in which many of the ministers 
of the early part of the last century were educated. It may not, 

E 



50 



THE LIFE OF 



He soon admitted Mr. Heywood into his confidence and 
friendship. Mr. Heywood remembered this, and alluded 
to it in a letter written when they were both near the 
end of their labours. They were born and died nearly 
at the same time ; they were ministers and Non-Con- 
formists, neighbours and friends, had the same trials 
and the same encouragements. 

In the second year of his residence at Cambridge Mr. 
Heywood was joined by his younger brother, Nathaniel, 
who being a riper scholar, as having enjoyed at an earlier 
period the benefit of the instruction of Mr. Rudal, the 
good schoolmaster, was thought ready for the University 
more than two years earlier in life than Oliver. He was 

therefore, be improper to give the following short account of him : — 
He was the son of Thomas Jollie, of Abram, by Jane, daughter of 
John Aldred, of the same place ; born about 1610, married Elizabeth 
Hall, of Droilsden, widow, who had a daughter that afterwards 
married Adam Martindale, the minister mentioned in a former note. 
He became a soldier as soon as the war commenced, and, by com- 
mission dated January 21, 1642, was made Provost Marshal General 
of all the Forces in Lancashire. By another commission, under the 
hand of Sir Thomas Fairfax, dated January 27, 1643, he was made 
Quarter- Master General of the Army ; and by a third, under the hand 
of the same, Provost Marshal General in Lancashire, with power as 
Captain to choose his Lieutenant and subordinate officers. On Fe- 
bruary 3, 1647, he was commissioned in the same office to the gar- 
rison of Chester and the regiment under the command of Colonel 
Duckinfield, whose regiment had the command of the garrisons of 
Shrewsbury, Lancaster, Liverpool, and Ludlow ; and again, on Fe- 
bruary 13 following, he was commissioned Quarter-Master of Colonel 
Duckinfield's regiment. In that year he raised a company for that 
regiment, of which he was appointed Captain, and served with it in 
Ireland. He was also Muster- Master for the County of Lancaster, 
by commission dated April 4, 1644. All these commissions were 
shown to Randal Holme, of Chester, who was acting as deputy to 
Riley, then Norroy King-at-Arms, in October 1648, and are recited in 
the grant of an augmentation to the arms borne by his family, which 
were, on a chief vert three right hands couped on a silver shield, 
namely, a bloody sword between two keys azure. The grant is still 
in possession of his descendants, and a copy of it may be seen in 
Harl. MS. 2161. f. 293. The arms are cut in stone on the tomb of 
Timothy Jollie, near the vestry-door of the chapel at Sheffield. Major 
Jollie died in 1666, having brought up three sons at the University. 
He was an original member of the Manchester Presbyterian Classis. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



51 



entered of Trinity College on May 4, 1 648. " At that 
time," says his brother, " his heart was not seasoned with 
a principle of saving grace ; though he was religiously 
educated, united in holy exercises, loved God's people, 
and was not tainted with gross immorality, yet he had 
not discerned the evil of sin, the malignity of his nature, 
or the necessity of Christ, till he was brought under the 
ministry of Mr. Hammond, through whose plain and 
powerful preaching his mind became the subject of 
strong convictions which cost him many sad thoughts 
of heart, as well as tears, but ended at last in a genuine 
conversion, in sincere covenanting with God, and in cen- 
tering his soul by faith on Jesus Christ." Between these 
two brothers there was the most complete community 
of sentiment and action, and the most perfect fraternal 
union. We shall hear more of him as we proceed. 

After studying the usual number of terms, Mr. Hey- 
wood took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and departed 
from the University in the spring or early in the summer 
of 1650. 

He rejoined his family in Lancashire. 



E 2 



52 THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PURITANS IN THE ASCENDANT. DESTRUCTION OF THE EPISCO- 
PAL CHURCH. OTHER MEASURES OF THE ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES. 

SCHEME OF A PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND. NEVER EXE- 
CUTED. RISE OF INDEPENDENCY. ITS PRINCIPLE. RAPID SPREAD. 

SECTS ARISING OUT OF IT. LANCASHIRE MADE A PROVINCE OF 

A PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. INDEPENDENCY THERE. CONTEST BE- 
TWEEN RICHARD HEYWOOD AND THE CONGREGATIONAL ELDERSHIP 

AT BOLTON. REFLECTIONS. MR. HEYWOOD IN THE SUMMER OF 

1650. HIS SETTLEMENT AS A MINISTER AT COLEY. 

We left the Puritans depressed, dispirited, and suffering 
under the policy which the princes of the house of 
Stuart adopted in respect of them ; and with their 
hearts becoming every day more and more alienated 
from episcopacy, and hardening against the prelates, 
who were the instruments of the severe policy of the 
court. It was however apparent that things were ad- 
vancing to a crisis ; that these oppressive measures would 
soon have to encounter an active resistance ; and that in 
fact a great political contest was near at hand. When 
it came, the issue was not long doubtful, as far as the 
subjection of the king and the overthrow of the Church 
were the things aimed at. What else was to come no 
one could possibly have foreseen. 

One of the earliest measures of the reforming parlia- 
ment was highly gratifying to the Puritans, as it was 
humiliating to the bishops. They were removed from 
their seats in parliament. But this was nothing to what 
soon followed ; their revenues were confiscated, and the 
name, style, and office of bishop was declared by an 
ordinance of parliament to be for ever abolished in 
England. Laud, the archbishop of Canterbury, a man 
to be respected for his learning and the encouragement 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



53 



he gave to learning, and admired for the stand he ven- 
tured to make against the Calvinian dogmas, as he is to 
be condemned for ostentation of power and the support 
he gave to prerogatives which it was time should be re- 
signed, an old man of seventy years of age, was cruelly 
put to death. Other ecclesiastical dignities, such as 
dean, archdeacon, chancellor, and canon, were abolish- 
ed, and the lands connected with them sequestered. 
The parochial clergy and lecturers alone remained, and 
they soon felt the effect of the spirit of change which 
was abroad. Commissioners were appointed to in- 
quire into their lives and doctrine, with power to remove 
from their cures those who were found ' ' ignorant or 
scandalous," and to put other ministers in their places ; 
and this power was rigidly and severely exercised. A 
Declaration of the Faith of the English Church was pub- 
lished by authority of parliament more precise in its 
statements than the Articles to which the clergy had 
heretofore been accustomed to subscribe, and which left 
no kind of ambiguity under which persons of Arminian 
sentiments might shelter themselves. Two correspond- 
ing Catechisms, the greater and the less, were published, 
in which was embodied the religious instruction to be 
given to the young. The public use of the Book of 
Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments 
was prohibited, and a Directory for public Religious Ser- 
vice and for the Sacraments was issued, which allowed 
all the latitude in respect of ceremonies, gesture and 
vestments which the Puritans had so long and earnestly 
coveted. It gave them liberty also in the more import- 
ant point of free prayer in the public assembly. Finally, 
there was a new national pledge or oath prepared, which, 
under the name of the Solemn League and Covenant, all 
persons who held any office, civil or ecclesiastical, were 
required to take, by which they bound themselves to the 
most zealous prosecution of all measures for political 
and religious reformation. All the points for which the 
Puritan party had been for so many years contending, 



54 



THE LIFE OF 



as far as they were destructive, were thus fully at- 
tained. 

In these measures parliament moved with the concur- 
rence and at the perpetual suggestion of a body of per- 
sons whom they had convoked, called the Assembly of 
Divines. This assembly consisted of three distinct classes 
of men. First, there were the divines, who formed by 
far the great majority, men summoned from every part 
of the kingdom who were supposed to excel their bre- 
thren in Christian knowledge and experience. Of these 
Lancashire sent two, namely, Richard Heyrick, the 
warden of Manchester, and Charles Herle, the rector 
of Winwick. There were next a few laymen, of whom 
the celebrated Selden was one, a man of whom it is no 
praise to say that he surpassed all the other members of 
the Assembly in learning, for in curious and profound 
scholarship he had not his superior among the most 
eminent scholars of Europe*. And, lastly, there were 
deputies from Scotland. Such was the composition of 
the Assembly by which the Church of England was to 
be remodelled. The divines were by so much the more 
numerous that they out-voted and over-rode the rest. 
But there was no perfect agreement among them even 
on principal points. There were some who held that 
the episcopal order existed jure divino, and that there 

* We have few instances of men appearing out of place so striking 
as Selden in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. It is " Saul 
among the Prophets ; " and what execution we may conceive the 
sword of Saul might have done among the long-stoled prophets, 
that the wit and learning of Selden did among the gowned Puritans 
with whom he was associated. He delighted to tease and perplex, 
but he attempted to carry nothing ; and it seems as if his end were 
not anything more than to dazzle and confound. How unlike he 
must have been to all his associates appears plainly in his Table Talk, 
a work the genuineness of which cannot be doubted. It is plain 
that he thought it the part of true wisdom to keep down as much 
as possible the excitement which so often arises from diversity of 
opinion in respect of religious ministrations ; — a good principle, 
though it may be carried too far. See particularly what he says on 
" Scrutanmii Scripturas," and the whole article entitled 'Religion.' 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



55 



could be no true Christian and Apostolic Church with- 
out it ; but these soon ceased to attend. There were a 
few who opposed themselves to any national union in a 
church. But the larger portion of the English divines 
and the deputies from Scotland were Presbyterian, still 
contending for a National Church, but that the Church 
should be constituted in the Presbyterian form, without 
bishops, having no order superior to presbyters, 

The establishment of such a National Church as this 
was the main object of those persons who looked beyond 
the mere destructive. Indeed the persons in the Assem- 
bly were very few who did not look to some national 
union and general consent, though they might differ re- 
specting the foundation of it, and the principles on which 
it should be constructed. In one thing the majority 
agreed, that greater liberty should be allowed to the 
ministers, and greater power of interference in affairs 
ecclesiastical be given to the laity. In general terms, 
as the political state, so the ecclesiastical state was to 
become more republican. They did not therefore stop 
at the abolition of the Church as constituted with the 
episcopal order, but they set themselves to raise, if pos- 
sible, a Presbyterian Church in its place. 

The frame of the proposed church was this : — Where - 
ever there was an established congregation with a pastor, 
whether in a church to which tithe of common right 
belonged, or one in which a vicar was established, or a 
mere chapel to which no tithe belonged, persons called 
Ruling Elders were to be chosen by the votes of the 
congregation, whose duty it was to assist the pastor or 
minister by their information, advice, and service, and 
to exercise a superintendence over all the other persons 
composing the congregation. These formed the Con- 
gregational Eldership. The minister and some of the 
more discreet of the ruling elders in districts containing 
about twenty or thirty congregations were to meet once 
a month as a Classical Presbytery ; the number of elders 
sent by each congregation not to be more than four, nor 



56 



THE LIFE OF 



less than two. One of the ministers was to act as mo- 
derator or chairman. Great power was to be given to 
these presbyteries. They might redress any abuse of 
any kind that could be construed into an offence against 
ecclesiastical discipline. They were the examiners of 
persons who were candidates for the ministry, and with 
them it lay to give or refuse ordination. An appeal, 
however, lay from them to the Provincial Assembly, 
which was to meet twice a-year, and to consist of two 
ministers and four ruling elders sent from each Classical 
Presbytery in the province. Above all was to be a 
National Assembly, composed of two ministers and four 
ruling elders sent from each Provincial Assembly, toge- 
ther with five learned and godly persons from each of 
the Universities. This was to be the court of final 
appeal, but it could meet only when summoned by 
parliament. 

Such was the frame of the Presbyterian Church of 
England which the Puritans would have established. 

It was a part of the duty of the Congregational Elder- 
ships to inquire into the religious knowledge and spi- 
ritual estate of any member of the congregation, and to 
admonish, suspend from the Lord's table, and even to 
excommunicate those whom they deemed ignorant or 
scandalous. The Classical Presbyteries were to deter- 
mine cases of conscience, and to remove difficulties in 
respect of doctrine ; to endeavour the conversion of 
schismatics and popish recusants ; to take cognizance 
of cases of simony or irregular entrance on the ministe- 
rial office, of affected lightness and vanity in preaching, 
of non-residence, of non-compliance with the Directory, 
and other ministerial irregularities. They interposed in 
the affairs of particular congregations if the eldership 
appeared to neglect its duty, and they censured ministers 
who were scandalous in life or doctrine. In respect of 
the exercise of their duty of ordination, they were to 
examine the qualifications of candidates, to see that they 
brought proper certificates of unblameable life, diligence 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



57 



and proficiency in their studies, of the time spent in the 
Universities, the degrees taken there, that they were of 
the age of four-and-twenty, and that they had taken the 
solemn league and covenant. 

The Presbyterian Church of England existed however 
only as a parliamentary project. The national assembly 
was never convoked ; nor could it be, for there was 
hardly a provincial assembly in the country from whom 
deputies were to come to form it, and in few places had 
the people proceeded even so far as to establish Congre- 
gational Elderships or Classical Presbyteries. 

The cause of this backwardness in conforming to the 
ordinance of parliament by which this frame of a Na- 
tional Church was sanctioned may be seen in part in 
the unpreparedness of many portions of the kingdom 
for so great a change, where very zealous ministers had 
not been stationed; and in part in obvious inconveniences 
of the system itself in some of its most important points. 
Persons, not irreligious, may naturally have been reluc- 
tant to raise to the authority of a ruling elder some of 
their honest neighbours, who having never before aspired 
to anything higher than a constable, might reasonably be 
supposed not to know very well how to use the power 
with which an elder was to be invested ; and it must 
have been perceived from the beginning by any reflecting 
person that there could be no uniformity in the judg- 
ments of such bodies as the Classical Presbyteries or 
Provincial Assemblies, who were without law or prece- 
dent to guide them, and that therefore the rule of go- 
vernment must have been uncertain and often vexatious. 
It must also have been perceived that the harmony of 
the parishes would be in great danger of frequent inter- 
ruption, for it could not be supposed that a suspended 
or excommunicated member would always be satisfied 
with the sentence pronounced upon him, or that the 
lives of ruling elders could always bear the strict scru- 
tiny of jealous and offended neighbours. Besides this, 
there was a large body of persons devoted in heart to 



58 



THE LIFE OF 



the old system who greatly preferred the public service 
in the manner of the English Liturgy to the prayers of 
the Puritan ministers by whom the pulpits were fiJled, 
and who, though depressed as they then were, would 
lend no hand in the parishes to the establishment of the 
Presbyterian discipline. 

But the main cause of the immediate failure of the 
project was the rise of a principle, which if it must not 
be called new, at this period first became prominent in 
England. The principle I mean is Independency . 

The fundamental principle of Independency is this : — 
That it was not the intention of the founders of Christ- 
ianity that all who should take upon themselves the 
Christian name should form one vast society, the 
Church, united together under one Head; — a majestic 
and splendid idea : or that each nation or political com- 
munity should form themselves into such a society un- 
der a particular Head, so as to form a National Church : — 
but that wherever there was a congregation of persons, be 
it large or be it small, who had united themselves together 
for Christian purposes and had a regularly-appointed pas- 
tor and deacons, there was a true Christian Church, with- 
out any union, connection, or dependency on or with any 
other similar community, except such as might be agreed 
upon for purposes of friendly communication or spiritual 
assistance and advice. The call of such a congregation 
of any person to the office of pastor was regarded by 
them as to all intents and purposes the investing of such 
person with the sacred character of minister, without 
any ordination by bishop or any body of presbyters ; 
though other ministers might be called in to witness the 
choice which they had made, and to beg the Divine 
blessing on the connexion into which they were about 
to enter. It was also a part of the system to allow of 
the preaching of " gifted brethren." 

This was one of the various opinions which appeared 
in England as soon as men were invited to " Search the 
Scriptures" rather than to "Hear the Church." One 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



59 



Robert Brown, a minister in Northamptonshire, of a 
good and ancient family in the midland parts of England, 
was a zealous assertor of the principle in the reign of 
Elizabeth, and suffered much on that account ; whence 
it was that persons of this opinion were sometimes called 
Brownists. The opinion was not without its supporters 
in the reigns of the two first Stuarts. The holders of 
this opinion were a species under the genus Puritan, for 
they had all the scruples and the strictness of that body. 
They were considered extreme by both parties in the 
Church. They were disliked both by the Episcopalians 
and Presbyterians as holding principles which tended to 
religious and political disintegration. A considerable 
portion of the harsh treatment to which the Puritans 
were subject fell upon them ; but they had not suffered 
so much as a body distinct from the Puritans at large to 
raise them into any particular notice. Many of them 
removed to New England, in which country the opinion 
prevailed to a greater extent than at home. 

Five ministers, all University-men, of these opinions, 
or opinions near-allied to them, left England in or about 
1632, and settled themselves in Holland, where was a 
universal toleration even at that early period. Their 
names were Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Simpson, and Bur- 
roughs. Other persons accompanied them, and they had 
English congregations formed on their principles at Rot- 
terdam and Arnheim. When the Parliament had resolved 
on granting liberty to the ministers and altering the con- 
stitution of the Church, these men returned to England 
and became members of the Assembly. They formed 
there a compact and steady minority ; agreeing with the 
rest in every thing that tended to destruction, but divi- 
ding against them when the object was to raise another 
National Church in place of the Episcopal Church 
which was destroyed. The word Dissenter, in its tech- 
nical sense, was first applied to these men. They were 
so constantly opposed to the will of the majority, that 
they were known in the Assembly by the name of The 
Dissenting Brethren. This was about 1643. 



60 



THE LIFE OF 



In the Assembly they could carry nothing. There the 
whole power was with the Presbyterians. But they set 
themselves to work upon the people at large ; and, by 
means of zealous preaching and of the circulation of 
pamphlets, they soon brought over many to their opi- 
nions, and in London and in country parishes congre- 
gations began to be formed of persons who left their 
parish-churches, forming themselves into independent 
societies, with deacons and a pastor of their own choo- 
sing. These societies were called by the name of Gathered 
Churches. A few of the old dissenting congregations 
still existing originated at this period, and in this manner. 

There are few instances of success rapidly following 
on the promulgation of a new opinion so remarkable as 
this. But its success was favoured by the then state of 
the nation, where was a powerful party contending for 
greater freedom, both political and ecclesiastical ; and 
this system seemed to promise the highest conceivable 
ecclesiastical freedom consistent with the maintenance 
of any degree of Christian union. In particular, it 
made its way in the army. At the first the great 
captains were Presbyterians ; but in a little while they 
were superseded by officers who were zealous Inde- 
pendents, and it went on strengthening itself there till 
the whole power of the army was bent in that direction. 
Thus before seven years had passed from the time when 
Episcopacy was abolished, the sounder and more en- 
lighted part of the Puritan body found itself reduced 
to political insignificancy : the King was put to death 
before their eyes, some of the most eminent persons be- 
longing to them were forcibly driven from their places 
in parliament, and the whole power of the state had 
passed into the possession of a party whose leading 
principle in ecclesiastics was as opposite to theirs, as 
was the principle of Episcopacy itself. 

Thus it seems ever to be in political movements. 
They are begun by men well-intentioned, earnest, and 
honest • an established order of things which they meant 
to improve is overturned and destroyed ; and there arises 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



61 



not that beautiful fabric which they in their imagina- 
tions had contemplated, but some unsightly building, 
full of strange and unclean beasts who find warmth and 
shelter in its precincts, and who not unfrequently sally 
forth to tread down and rend to pieces those well-mean- 
ing men who gave them their power to do so. And this 
it is which makes wise and good men pause before they 
engage in efforts to amend an existing system, while 
they wish to see it improved ; through a fear which con- 
stant experience shows to be most reasonable, that they 
will but open the way for something in which there is far 
more of evil, and be themselves the first to be destroyed. 
We shall soon see what Mr. Heywood himself thought 
of the consequences which ensued on the success of his 
own party. 

When the principle of Independency extensively pre- 
vailed and was supported by the power of the sword, it is 
manifest that nothing could be done effectually towards 
executing the project of a Presbyterian Church. 

The principle itself was obnoxious to the Presbyte- 
rians ; but it became much more so when it was per- 
ceived how it made way for the prevalence of all kinds 
of wild opinions and eccentric practices in religion. 
This necessarily followed on the encouragement which 
they gave to lay-preaching. It was out of Independency 
that there sprang the numerous sects which are the 
reproach of that period and of Puritanism itself, — the 
Sabbatarians, Millenarians, Grindletonians, Muggle- 
tonians, Fifth Monarchists, Ranters, Seekers, Quakers, 
Anabaptists, with many others more short-lived than 
these, and yet of these only the Anabaptists and the 
Quakers have had any continued existence. That they 
did not continue longer was owing to the subsidence of 
the religious excitement, and the recovery of the good 
sense of the English people : but they existed long enough 
to be a dreadful annoyance to the sober Puritan, and to 
involve him at last in a common calamity with them. 

Most of the sects had made their appearance and the 



62 



THE LIFE OF 



ministers were making their way into the national edifices 
appropriated for the meeting of Christians for worship, 
and the religious anarchy of the next ten years was be- 
ginning, when Mr. Heywood left Cambridge, in 1650. 

In no part of the kingdom was equal progress 
made in establishing Presbyterianism as in Lancashire. 
There the system was actually carried out to its fullest 
extent, except that there was no opportunity of sending 
deputies to a national assembly. Congregational Elder- 
ships were appointed, Classical Presbyteries also, and 
the Provincial Assembly was constituted, which met at 
Preston. There were among the ministers of the time 
in Lancashire many able and zealous men who exerted 
themselves to bring this about, the principal of whom 
were Mr. Hey rick and Mr. Hollingworth, of Manchester, 
Mr. Angier, of Denton, Mr. Tildesley, of Dean, Mr. Har- 
rison, of Ashton,Mr. Ambrose, of Preston, and who sup- 
ported the dignity of the system by their own gravity, 
ability, and general personal character. The ordinance 
of Parliament by which the county of Lancaster was 
thrown into the form of a province of a Presbyterian 
Church bears date October 2, 1646. The Presbyteries 
were nine ; and they were denominated from the prin- 
cipal towns in the district ; — Manchester, Bolton, Black- 
burn, Warrington, Walton, Croston, Preston, Lancaster, 
and Aldingham. In the Manchester Presbytery, the 
parishes of Manchester, Prestwich, Oldham, Flixton, 
Eccles, and Ash ton were included : in that of Bolton, 
Bolton, Middleton, Bury, Rochdale, Dean, and Radcliffe. 
It will be remembered that some of these were large 
parishes, having many chapels # . 

The ordinance was passed in accordance with, a peti- 
tion from the county, which was subscribed by 12,578 
persons, no inconsiderable proportion of the whole Pro- 
testant population. The Presbyterians were the more 
desirous of the establishment of the system in conse- 

* I subjoin a list of the persons who formed the first Classical 
Presbyteries of Manchester and Bolton, taken from the Ordinance 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



63 



quence of the appearance in Lancashire of the Inde- 
pendent principle, and the controversy which arose upon 

of Parliament. They show who were the more zealous Presbyterians 
of the time in Mr. Heywood's own county. 

MANCHESTER CLASSIS. 



Ministers. 
Mr. Richard Heyrick, and 
Mr. Richard Hollingworth, of 

Manchester. 
Mr. John Angier, of Denton. 
Mr. William Walker, of Newton. 
Mr. Toby Furnes, of Prestwich. 
Mr. Humph. Barnet, of Oldham. 
Mr. John Jones, of Eccles. 
Mr. John Harrison, of Ashton. 

Laymen. 
Robert Hyde, of Denton, esq. 
Rich.Howarth,ofManchester,esq. 
Robert Ashton, of Shipley, esq. 
Thos.Strangways,of Gorton, esq. 



William Booth, of Reddish, gent. 

J ohn Gaskel, of Manchester, gent, 

Edw. Sandiforth, of Oldham, gent. 

John Birch, of Openshaw, gent. 

Thos. Smith, of Manchester, gent. 

Peter Serjeant,ofPilkington, gent. 

Rob.Leech, of Ashton parish,gent. 

J ohnWright,of Bradford,yeoman. 

Wm. Peak, of Worsley, yeoman. 

Thomas Taylor, of Flixton pa- 
rish, yeoman. 

Thomas Barlow, of Eccles parish, 
yeoman. 

Peter Seddon, of Pilkington, 
yeoman. 

James Jollie, of Droilsden, gent. 



BOLTON CLASSIS. 



Ministers. 
Mr. John Harpur of Bolton. 
Mr.WilliamAshton,ofMiddleton. 
Mr. William Alte. 
Mr. Andrew Latham. 
Mr. Jonathan Scolfield, of Bury. 
Mr. Robert Bathe, of Rochdale. 
Mr. Alexander Horrocks, 
Mr. John Tildesley. 
Mr, James Walton, of Dean. 
Mr. Thomas Pyke, of Radcliffe. 

Laymen. 
Ralph Ashton, of Middleton, esq. 
John Bradshaw, of Bradshaw, esq. 
Edm. Hopwood, of Hopwood, esq. 
Robert Lever, of Darcy Lever, esq. 
John Andrews, of Little Lever, 
gent. 

Rob.Heywood,of Heywood, gent. 
Peter Holt, of Heap, gent. 
Arthur Smethurst,of Heap, gent. 



Thomas Eccarsal, of Bury, gent. 
Edward Butterworth, of Belfield, 
esq. 

John Scolfield, of Castleton, yeo- 
man. 

Emanuel Thompson, of Rochdale, 
clothier. 

Sam.Wylde, of Rochdale,mercer. 
James Stot, of Healey, gent. 
Robert Pares, of Rochdale, gent. 
Rob.Worthmgton,ofSmithel,esq. 
Giles Green, of West Houghton, 

yeoman. 
Henry Molyneux, of West 

Houghton, gent. 
Hen. Seddon, of Heaton, yeoman. 
Robert Hardman of Radcliffe, 

yeoman. 
John Bradshaw, of Darcy Lever, 

gent. 

RiehardDickenson,ofAynsworth, 
yeoman. 



64 



THE LIFE OF 



it. The controversy originated with Mr. Samuel Eaton, 
who returned to England at the beginning of the war 
from New England, whither he had gone and where he 
had imbibed or become strengthened in the principle of 
Independency. On his return he settled at Duckinfield, 
in the Cheshire parish of Stockport, but near the con- 
fines of the parish of Manchester. There he had a ga- 
thered church. He was very zealous for his Independent 
principles, and was supported by a few of the neighbour- 
ing ministers, particularly Mr. Root and Mr. Timothy 
Taylor. There were persons favouring these opinions in 
Manchester even as early as 1649. Hollingworth tells 
us that a small Independent Church was founded which 
met in a room at the College*. In 1 651 there were two 
regularly formed Independent congregations in Lan- 
cashire ; that at Walmesley, of which Mr. Michael Bris- 
coe was the pastor ; and that at Altham, of which the 
pastor was Thomas Jollie, Mr. Hey wood's friend at 
Cambridge, who had fallen very early into these opinions. 

The chief administration of religious affairs in this 
county was, however, during the whole succeeding period 
till the return of the king, in the hands of the Presby- 
terians, a completely organized body. There was no- 
thing approaching to it in completeness in any other 
part of the kingdom ; and it is perhaps to these twelve 
years in which the party acted on the basis of an Ordi- 
nance of Parliament which gave a legalized sanction to 
their proceedings, and in fact incorporated them with 
the general polity of the Commonwealth, that we are to 
attribute the bolder front which Presbyterianism has 
ever put on in Lancashire than in any other part of the 
kingdom, and the preservation to our own times of so 
much greater a proportion of the Presbyterian congre- 
gations formed when Presbyterianism had become non- 
conformity. 

The book of the Proceedings of the Manchester 

* Mancuniensis, a MS. in the Cheetham Library, printed in 12mo. 
1839. p. 122. 



OLIVER HliYWOOD. 



65 



Classis has been preserved, a public, authentic, and im- 
portant record, in one sense a national record, the Classis 
having been a body which arose in the public polity of 
the times, and which rested on the sound basis of the 
law of the land. Much use is made of it, and much in- 
formation from other sources, on these matters, is to be 
found, in 'The History of the Collegiate Church of Man- 
chester,' by Dr. Hibbert, an excellent work, to which we 
have already had occasion to refer. 

Of the working of the system in the parishes, the fol- 
lowing narrative by Mr. Heywood of what happened be- 
tween his father and the Congregational Eldership at 
Bolton affords an instructive exposition: — 

" In the year 1647, or thereabouts, the Presbyterian 
government being settled at Bolton, the ministers, Mr. 
John Harpur and Mr. Richard Goodwin, together with 
the Eldership, made an order, after an examination and 
approbation of the communicants, that every time they 
were to come to the Lord's Supper, every particular 
communicant should, upon the Friday before, fetch a 
little ticket, as they called it, of lead, of the elders, and 
show it to the elders again in the church before they were 
to receive the Sacrament, that they might know that 
none but such as were admitted did intrude themselves. 
The elders also took them of them at that time, and 
they were to fetch them against the next. Now my 
father together with several other able Christians in the 
congregation were unwilling to submit to this practice, 
partly because they looked upon it as an innovation and 
a snare, partly because it was cumbersome to the com- 
municants, partly because it was an uncertain means to 
attain the end, as experience testified ; partly, also, be- 
cause no other churches in the country had any such 
practice. These and such like reasons he exhibited to 
the Eldership in writing, and in his own practice re- 
fused to fetch or show any such ticket when he came to 
the Sacrament. Whereupon they sent for him, sum- 
moned him to appear before them. He came, and many 

F 



66 



THE LIFE OF 



disputes they had. They admonished him, and when he 
was still resolute, persisting still in his schism, as they 
pleased to call it, they suspended him from the Lord's 
Supper. But that was not sufficient, for, as I remem- 
ber, they did also excommunicate him for contempt, be- 
cause, as they said, he laughed them to scorn ; for ha- 
ving naturally a smiling countenance it may be he might 
sometimes smile in his discourse with them. However, 
he would not submit himself upon their admonition, nor 
acknowledge that he had done wrong ; therefore they 
proceeded. My dear mother would have had him to 
have yielded for peace sake : the rest, old Robert Cromp- 
ton, Roger Roscow, and others, though approving what 
he did and encouraging him, yet held off, and would not 
appear, so that he was alone in the controversy. Being 
in this strait, shut out from communion with them, he 
appealed to the Classical Meeting of Ministers and Elders. 
There it was debated a considerable time, and though 
the Classis were unsatisfied in the proceedings of the 
Eldership of Bolton against my father, yet they were loth 
to censure them, only desired them to pass it by and 
admit him to the Supper. But when they trifled about 
it, and did nothing, my father made an appeal from the 
Classical Presbytery at Bury to the Provincial Assembly 
at Preston, and after the business had been debated there, 
they made an order that the Congregational Eldership 
at Bolton should revoke their sentence of suspension of 
my father from the Lord's Supper, admit him again into 
fellowship with them ; exhorting both sides to a mutual 
accommodation; and, as I remember, the tickets, the 
occasion of this contention, were by this time laid aside. 
When this came to the ministers and elders of Bolton 
church, they something stickled at his restoration with- 
out his submission. However they were bound to obey the 
order of the Provincial Assembly, and at last framed a 
paper which was read in the church, wherein they freed 
Richard Heywood from his suspension ; but withall made 
some hints therein as though he had submitted him- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



67 



self, which he did not, and so it was not at all satisfactory 
to him, and I think he never joined with them in the 
Lord's Supper afterwards, but was entertained at Cockey 
and all places about. This is, in short, an account of that 
troublesome business, which was afoot just at that time 
when I was at Cambridge ; and T remember, when I came 
into the country in the latter end of 1648, I writ much 
for him^ which was in way of reply to the Eldership of 
Bolton, and some appeals which I have now forgot : but 
the controversy was hot, begot much bad blood, many 
animosities amongst good people in the society, some 
taking one side, others another, so that it became a very 
heavy burthen to the spirit of my dear mother, who was 
all for love and peace, and was willing to have yielded 
to any thing rather than to have contended : but he 
stood upon his own integrity, which he often said he 
would not remove as long as he lived, quoting that of 
Job xxvii. 2 — 6. But however it was a great affliction 
to him, which yet he bore with invincible courage and 
magnanimity, and was not daunted with anything." 

This is a very extraordinary narrative, and the reflec- 
tions which it suggests are not of a nature very favourable 
to the system which was to supersede the ancient arrange- 
ments of the Anglican Church. Vehement had been the 
outcry when spiritual authority had interposed to remove 
a person guilty of irregularities from Christian com- 
munion ; but when done it had not been done without 
inquiry by persons wholly devoid of personal interest in 
the question, and when the most cultivated and intelli- 
gent minds were brought to the investigation of the facts 
and the application of the principles of law and ancient 
precedent. But here the step was ventured upon by a little 
knot of a man's familiar acquaintance, men with whom 
the ordinary businesses of life had brought him into fre- 
quent communication, and who must in some cases have 
been either personal friends or rivals, or perhaps enemies. 
And this strange and novel tribunal proceeds to pass the 
severe sentence of excommunication, and on an occasion 

F 2 



68 



THE LIFE OF 



so trivial and so foolish, that it is difficult riot to look 
upon the whole affair with a feeling approaching to con- 
tempt for the people who could waste time and patience 
on any thing so exceedingly worthless. At the same 
time it must be allowed that the Eldership had an im- 
practicable person to deal with : but then impracticable 
persons it ought to have been expected would be found, 
and they are not the least frequently found in combina- 
tions for purposes of religion : and a system must be 
defective which allows one such person to outbrave the 
authorities, and embroil a whole parish in heart-burnings 
and disputes about a subject in itself so trivial. On the 
whole, it appears that no arrangement could be framed 
for the government of a church to which such a person 
as Mr. Richard Hey wood would not have been a dissatis- 
fied opponent ; and we may see in this narrative that 
the more sober and quiet part of the parishioners of 
Bolton would begin to think that little was gained by 
the change from Episcopacy to Presbyterianism, which 
they had so earnestly solicited. 

Mr. Hey wood's entrance on the ministry illustrates 
the state of anarchy to which ecclesiastical affairs in 
England were at that time reduced. 

When he returned from Cambridge to Lancashire he 
had more than completed his twentieth year. But he 
wanted eight or nine months of being twenty-one, while 
twenty-four was the age at which, according to the 
Presbyterian project, a person might enter the ministry 
to undertake the office of pastor. It was his own inten- 
tion and desire to join the family of some older minister, 
that he might become better acquainted with the duties 
of the pastoral office ; and the family entered into nego- 
tiation with Mr. Angier of Denton to receive him for that 
purpose into his house. These negotiations were not con- 
ducted to any successful issue ; and the summer of 1650 
was spent by Mr. Heywood with his father at Little Lever, 
or in visits to distant friends. 

On one of those visits he first began to preach. He 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



69 



was at an obscure place, the name of which he has not 
mentioned, beyond Preston ; and having there made a 
beginning, he was easily prevailed upon to undertake 
the same work in the churches of Carlton and Skip- 
ton, when visiting his sister, Mrs. Whitehead, who re- 
sided at Bent-hall, in Lothersdale in Craven. 

Very soon after this he became settled as the minister 
and pastor of a rural flock. The place was Coley, one 
of the chapels of the parish of Halifax, in Yorkshire, a 
parish of great extent lying on the Lancashire border, 
Coley being thirty or forty wearisome miles from Bolton. 
This was the most important step in the life of Mr. Hey- 
wood, for Coley continued from that time to be the place 
of his abode and the principal scene of his labours for 
the remainder of his life. 

His settlement there may be said to have been quite 
accidental. 

His uncle, Francis Critchlaw, was acquainted with a 
family at Coley, and paying them a visit found the peo- 
ple without a minister, Mr. Cudworth having lately left 
them. He told them of Mr. Heywood, who was not 
entirely unknown to one or two persons among them. 
Instead of the appointment to these chapels being vested 
as it now is in the vicar of Halifax, who resides amidst 
his clergy and people more like the bishop of a little 
diocese than the vicar of a country parish, the inhabit- 
ants of the chapelry chose the minister. Indeed there 
was then no vicar of Halifax, the church of Halifax 
being reduced to the same rank with the chapels that 
had been dependent upon it, and having its particular 
minister, as the several chapels had theirs, The people 
of Coley sent " two ancient godly men" to Little Lever 
to invite Mr. Heywood to Coley. One of them was 
Luke Hoyle, whose name has occurred before. Mr. 
Heywood returned with them, and conducted the service 
at the chapel on the succeeding Sunday. So great was 
the satisfaction which the young preacher gave, that the 
people nocked about him when the service was over, 



70 



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earnestly entreating that he would remain with them. 
All they could obtain was a promise that he would re- 
turn to them on another Sunday : but he thought at 
that time so little of any settlement at Coley that he 
took a journey to Wrexham to visit his relative who 
resided there. Another minister appeared in the mean- 
time at Coley, a Mr. Hargreaves, whose stay among 
them was desired by some of the parishioners. Others 
however looked impatiently for Mr. Hey wood's return. 
On his second visit they were more importunate, and 
the desire of his settling with them appearing to be ge- 
neral, he consented to accept their call. 

Such were the circumstances under which he came to 
Coley. The date of his first visit is Michaelmas, 1650. 
On the 26th of November following, the terms of his 
engagement were settled at Halifax. The income w 7 as 
to be 101. from the lands belonging to the chapel, and 
20Z. from the contributions of the people. He reserved 
to himself the right of retiring at the expiration of six 
months. 

Thus unordained, and not yet twenty-one, he became a 
pastor of one of the old national congregations. It does 
not appear that any other minister was concerned in the 
arrangement ; it was an affair between himself and the 
people of Coley. Yet his beginning to preach at that 
early age, and even to take the charge of a congregation, 
was not without the sanction of his friends in the minis- 
try, for Mr. Tildesley would gladly have retained him in 
Lancashire and placed him in the chapel of Haughton, 
then vacant by the death of Mr. Horrocks. 

In some private memoranda written many years after, 
he declares that he had never seen reason to repent of 
the step which he took at this most critical period of a 
minister's life. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



71 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PARISH OF HALIFAX. COLEY CHAPEL. CHARACTER OF THE PA- 
RISH BY DR. FAVOUR, JAMES RITHER, AND DR. WHITAKER. THE 

LECTURE THERE. VICARS. MINISTERS DURING THE COMMON- 
WEALTH. MINISTERS IN THE SEVERAL CHAPELS AT THE TIME OF 

MR. HEYWOOD's SETTLEMENT AT COLEY.— MR. HEYWOOD's PREDE- 
CESSORS AT COLEY. FAMILIES AT COLEY. THE SUNDERLANDS. 

CAPTAIN HODGSON. SIR THOMAS BROWNE, LATELY AN INHABITANT 

OF THE PARISH. THE BESTS. NATHANIEL HEYWOOD SETTLES AT 

ILLING WORTH. HE AND HIS BROTHER LIVE TOGETHER. MARRIAGE 

WITH ELIZABETH ANGIER. NOTICE OF HER FATHER. HER DEATH. 

THE DEATH OF MR. HEYWOOD's MOTHER. 

Rightly to understand Mr. Heywood's position, it 
must be remembered that many of the parishes in the 
north are of great extent, very different in this respect 
from the parishes in the south of England, and are con- 
sequently broken up into parochial chapelries. It has 
been ascertained that the area of the parish of Halifax is 
not less than one hundred and twenty-four miles. The 
mother-church is in the town of Halifax, and there are 
two chapels situated at Elland and Heptonstall which 
were probably founded about the same time with the 
parish church, and when this large district of mountain 
and forest land was first separated from some still more 
extensive parish and given a spiritual superintendent of 
its own. This may be referred to the reign of king 
Henry the First. From that time to the Reformation 
eight other edifices had arisen in various parts of the 
parish, works of ancient piety, in which religious ser- 
vices were performed. Two others arose in the interval 
between the Reformation and the triumph of Puritanism. 
These works brought the offices of religion home to 
those inhabitants of this wide parish, who living far 



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THE LIFE OF 



remote from their parish church, and where the natural 
features of the country rendered access difficult, and in 
some seasons impossible, could without them have had 
but few opportunities of joining in the offices of re- 
ligion. 

These twelve chapels had such endowment as the zeal 
or ability of their founders could afford them. With 
the great ecclesiastical revenue arising in the parish they 
had nothing to do. The whole of this had been assigned 
over at the time of the foundation of the parish to the 
monastery of Lewes in Sussex, who took the revenues 
for the support of their house, making, however, out of 
them a liberal allowance to the vicar, who had to per- 
form the duties for which this revenue was the proper 
but far more than sufficient compensation. 

Coley chapel was one of the twelve chapels of which 
I have spoken. It stands, or rather the new building 
which has superseded the old chapel in which Mr. Hey- 
wood officiated and is on the same site, in the township 
of Hipperholm. It is on high ground, and its white 
walls are conspicuous to the traveller for many miles of 
his journey between the two neighbouring towns of 
Halifax and Bradford. In the same township, and at a 
little distance from Coley chapel, is the chapel of Light- 
cliffe. Both these chapels were erected at the beginning 
of the sixteenth century, and Mr. Heywood has preserved 
a tradition, current in his time, that the foundation of 
them was an act of piety of two maidens, sisters, who 
lived at Priestley Green in the neighbourhood. Mr. Hey- 
wood, full of Puritan prejudice, says it was a good 
work, " though it might be done in superstition." No 
doubt it was a good and pious work, highly beneficial 
to a country, the inhabitants of which had to ascend 
one precipice and to descend two others whenever they 
had occasion to resort to their parish church. 

Coley chapel was erected for the benefit of the people 
inhabiting in Shelf, Northouram, and part of Hipper- 
holm. There is a village of Northouram, but the rural 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



73 



population of the parish of Halifax live for the most 
part dispersed in single houses, or in very small collec- 
tions of houses, so small as not to attain even to the 
character of hamlet. There is no village of Coley ; but 
near the chapel was a house called Coley Hall, which had 
been the residence of the chief family of the chapelry. 

The whole parish, lying on the eastern declivity of the 
English Apennines, and extending westward to the 
highest point where the waters spring which flow to the 
great estuaries on the east and west sides of the island, 
has all the characteristics of mountainous regions : 

" Terra mala et sterilis, dumetis obsita, saxis 
Horrida, quae nullis inventa est frugibus apta ; 
Sed bona gens, populus sanctus, pietatis et ardens." 

Such is the description of the parish by, it is believed, 
Dr. Favour, one of its early Protestant vicars, carved in 
stone on the free-school. Yet there appears to have 
been more than the usual amount of ferocity in the 
inhabitants of these mountainous and forest regions. 
One of the chapels, before the Reformation, was pol- 
luted by the shedding of human blood ; and one of the 
vicars, Dr. Holds worth, who built that part of the church 
called Holdsworth's works, a very unpopular man, was 
murdered in the vicarage-house in the reign of Queen 
Mary. The savage custom of the forest, which allowed 
execution by beheading to be done in a summary way 
on offenders convicted of crimes of no particular enor- 
mity, must have tended to brutalize the population. 
Seventeen persons, of whom four were women, were 
thus savagely butchered in the twenty-seven years be- 
fore Mr. Heywood became a resident of the parish. 
Two persons had been beheaded in the spring of the 
year in which he settled at Coley. They were, however, 
the last. 

A country like this, abounding in coal and mountain 
streams, is favourable to manufactures ; and the inha- 
bitants have been, from a remote period, engaged in the 
making of cloth as much as in tilling the ground. 



74 



THE LIFE OF 



The following description of the place and its inha- 
bitants, from the pen of a Yorkshire esquire of the reign 
of Elizabeth, has never been quoted, and is curious, if 
for nothing else, for the singular remark with which it 
concludes : — 

" These inhabitants of Halifax are planted among 
our most strong and barren mountains west from York, 
somewhat upon the south in the edge of Lancashire. 
These excel the rest in policy and industry for the use 
of their trade and grounds ; and after the rude and arro- 
gant manner of their wild country they surpass the rest 
in wisdom and wealth. They despise their old fashions 
if they can hear of a new more commodious ; rather 
affecting novelties than affied to old ceremonies ; only 
the ancient custom of beheading such as are apprehended 
for theft, without trial after the course of law, they are 
driven by the same need and necessity to continue, that 
enforced them to take it up at the first ; otherwise their 
trade in that wild place could not have been. It should 
seem that desire of praise and sweetness of their due 
commendation hath begun and maintained among these 
people a natural ardency of new inventions annexed to 
an unyielding industry in their faculty of cloth, and by 
enforcing grounds, beyond all hope, to fertility ; so that 
if the rest of the county would in this follow them but 
afar off, the force and wealth of Yorkshire would be 
soon doubled. In one instance, see but the very sham- 
bles of their town ; it is incredible how far the town of 
Halifax excels York in uttering much and good meat. 
These people were with the first well affected to religion, 
so that in the beginning of Her Majesty's most happy 
reign, if not since, it was hard for a minister, elsewhere 
in the county, of honest life and parentage, to fetch a 
wife." 

This may be compared with what an acute but too 
severe observer says of the same people at the beginning 
of the present century : — " A tincture of early Puritanism 
yet continues to appear in the manners and the Christian 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



75 



names of the people ; and perhaps there is not a parish 
in the kingdom where Old Testament names have so 
nearly superseded those of the New # . In the remoter 
parts of the parish, and particularly on the confines of 
Lancashire, where old families, the great correctors of 
barbarism, either have never existed or have been long 
extinct, the state of manners and morals is perhaps more 
degraded than in any part of the island. Ignorant and 
savage, yet cunning and attentive to their own interests, 
under few restraints from law, and still fewer from con- 
science, it is a singular phenomenon that almost all the 
people are, under one denomination or other, religion- 
ists ; a striking instance, I will not say of the tendency 
of separation to produce immorality, but of the inefficacy 
of multiplied and discordant modes of worship to cor- 
rect it. In fact, as far as evidence can be collected on 
the subject, they were neither better nor worse before 
the Reformation ; they were no better when all were 
nominally members of the Church of England f." 

The picture is overcharged, and I shall quote no more, 
except a very short passage, on account of its exact ac- 
cordance with what James Rither, whose curious memo- 
rial was unknown to Dr. Whitaker, had observed long 
before : — " They have no superior to court, no civilities 
to practise ; a sour and sturdy humour is the conse- 
quence ; so that a stranger is shocked by a tone of de- 
fiance in every voice, and an air of fierceness in every 
countenance." 

As at Manchester, so at Halifax, a lecture had been 
established in the church in the early part of the reign 
of Elizabeth, to the good effects of which archbishop 
Grindall thus appeals when objections began to be taken 

* Old Testament names are rarely found at Halifax before the 
Reformation. Of eighty-six names of persons of this parish which 
were affixed to a memorial in the reign of Henry the Eighth, there 
is not one derived from the Jewish Scriptures. 

t Loidis and Elmete, by the Rev. T; D. Whitaker, LL.D., folio, 
1816, pp. 371, 372. 



76 



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at court against this mode of working upon the people 
by persons who foresaw the certain consequence of doing 
so in the rise of Protestant disaffection : — 

" What bred the rebellion in the north ? Was it not 
papistry and the ignorance of God's holy word, and 
through want of preaching? And in the times of that 
rebellion, were not all men of all estates that made pro- 
fession of the Gospel most ready to offer their lives for 
your defence ? Insomuch that one poor parish in York- 
shire, which by continual preaching had been better 
instructed than the rest, Halifax I mean, was ready to 
bring three or four thousand men into the field to serve 
against the said rebels. How can Tour Majesty have a 
more lively trial and experience of the contrary effects 
of much preaching and little or no preaching, the one 
working most unnatural disobedience and rebellion, the 
other most faithful obedience ?" 

This passage Mr. Heywood found in the epistle dedi- 
catory before Mr. Greenhill's second part of his ' Expo- 
sition on Ezekiel*,' and treasured it up in his papers. 

These lectures appear to have been discontinued and 
to have had a new beginning about 1620. We find the 
following in Mr. Hey wood's notes : — " All those times, 
for thirty years together and upwards, there was a 
famous exercise maintained every month at Halifax, 
whereat not only neighbour ministers preached in their 
turns, but strangers far and near were sent for to preach 
it ; two sermons a- day, being the last Wednesday in the 
month; multitudes of hearers. It's said this exercise 
was maintained in Dr. Favour's days, who was a great 
friend to Non-Conformists, maintained two famous men 
as lecturers at Halifax, whom he shrouded under his au- 
thority and interest with the bishop, namely, Mr. Boys, 
banished out of Kent for his Non-Conformity, a choice 
man, very laborious in the work of the Lord, catechized 

* The passage has been often quoted. See Strype, Life of Grin- 
dall, 8vo, 1821, p. 439 ; and Watson, History of Halifax, 4to, 1775, 
p. 366. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



77 



all the poor, expounded to them in the church one day 
in the week, gave them money ; I have his catechism 
which he taught them : and Mr. Barlow, that writ upon 
Timothy, a choice man, who had been shrouded under 
Dr. Favour." When Dr. Favour died and Dr. Clay 
came in, he removed, Mr Heywood thought, to Ply- 
mouth. Mr. Ault afterwards was lecturer, who re- 
moved to Bury, in Lancashire. 

Dr. Richard Holds worth, who held the living at the 
Reformation, adhered to it in all the changes of the 
times ; and his successors, the early Protestant vicars of 
Halifax, had short incumbencies, and were in no respect 
distinguished men, till we come to Dr. Favour, who was 
instituted to the vicarage in 1598, and held the living 
till his death in 1623. He was a very active and influ- 
ential churchman both in and out of his parish. There is 
a quarto work of his of six hundred pages, printed in 
1619, which he entitled 'Antiquity triumphing over 
Novelty.' The design of this work is to refute the pre- 
tensions of the Romanists to the prescriptive claim from 
antiquity, by showing that the points against which the 
Protestants chiefly objected were of late introduction 
into the church. His successor, Dr. Clay, was a man 
of a different character. Then came the two Ramsdens, 
brothers, both of them apparently valuable men ; and after 
them Dr. Richard Marsh, who was Dean of York and 
had other preferment, one of the incumbents in York- 
shire who were removed from their cures as soon as the 
Parliament entered on the work of Church-Reformation, 
under the notion of being " ignorant and scandalous," 
or non-resident. Dr. Marsh lived to return and claim 
possession of his church. In the interval there were five 
ministers in succession at Halifax put in by the Puritan 
authorities ; namely, Mr. Waite, who removed to Gar- 
grave ; Mr. Root, the Independent, who removed to the 
chapel in Sowerby, and was a Non-Conformist under the 
Act of Uniformity ; Mr. Lake, who conformed under the 
Act and became at length Bishop of Chichester, and one 



78 



THE LIFE OF 



of the Seven Bishops in the reign of James the Second ; 
finally, he refused to take the oaths to king William*'. 
After them came Mr. Robert Booth, who was the mi- 
nister at Halifax when Mr. Hey wood settled at Coley, 
" an excellent scholar, good preacher, a man of unbla- 
mable life." This is the character given of him by Mr. 
Heywood, and it agrees with the more florid encomium 
bestowed upon him by Dr. Midgelyf . Eli Bentley, Mr. 
Heywood's friend at Cambridge, whom he left there, and 
who became a fellow of Trinity College, came to assist 
Mr. Booth in 1652, and succeeded him on his death in 
1657. He was the minister at Halifax when the return 
of the king brought back also Dr. Marsh to claim the 
church from which he had been removed. 

The ministers whom Mr. Heywood found in the cha- 
pels of the parish were Mr. Root, the Independent, at 
Sowerby ; Mr. Milner, at Sowerby -bridge, who long after 
succeeded Dr. Lake in the vicarage of Leeds, and, like 
him, refused to take the oaths to king William ; at Rip- 
ponden was " old Mr. Allen, who had been parson of 
Prestwich, a solid substantial preacher, who had been 
turned out in the war-time for not taking the Covenant ; 
he found shelter there ; they loved him well ; allowed him 
a competent maintenance ; frequently preached to them 
at Halifax Exercise : when the king came in in 1660, 
he was restored to Prestwich ; lived and died there." So 
far we have one Independent and two sound Episco- 
palians. At Elland were ministers of a still different cha- 
racter : " old Mr. Robert Town, the famous Antinomian, 
who writ some books ; he was the best scholar and 

* Bishop Lake was a native of the parish of Halifax, one of the 
many persons born in that parish in the first half of the seventeenth 
century who were sent to the Universities and became ministers. 
He preached his first sermon in his office at Halifax, July 26, 1647. 
He removed in 1 649 to Oldham, in Lancashire, where he proved a 
very troublesome person to the Presbyterian Classis at Manchester. 
In 1660 he became vicar of Leeds. 

f Hallifax and its Gibbet Law placed in a true light. 12mo. 1708. 
p. 81. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



79 



soberest man of that judgment in the country, but some- 
thing unsound in principles." At Illingworth Mr. Clark- 
son, " a good substantial preacher," who removed into 
Durham. At Luddenden Mr. Fairbank, "a solid preacher, 
but too much given to his cups." Of the ministers 
at Heptonstall and Croston, the places being remote 
from Coley, Mr. Heywood knew less ; but Antinomian 
principles were there in the ascendant, one of the Towns 
being at Heptonstall, and Richard Coore at Croston, the 
author of an octavo of eight hundred pages, entitled 
' A Practical Exposition of the Holy Bible,' framed in 
consistency with Antinomian views. These were the 
principles also of Mr. Taylor, the minister at Chapel-en- 
le-Brears, who became at length a professed Quaker. At 
Rastrick was Mr. Kay, " a good preacher," who removed 
to Dewsbury, and from thence to Leeds, where he was 
the lecturer; he was a " moderate Conformist" under 
the Act of 1662. His successor at Rastrick was Mr. 
Robinson, " an old man something inclined to the Anti- 
nomians," who was a Non-Conformist under the Act ; 
and lastly, at Lightcliffe, in Mr. Hey wood's immediate 
neighbourhood, he found Mr. Ainsworth, of whom he 
says, that he was " a scholar, little good beside." He 
became preacher at the great church in Hull. 

We have, therefore, in this one parish persons of very 
different sentiments, — Presbyterians, Independents, and 
those who were secretly looking for the re-establishment 
of the Episcopal Church ; and in point of doctrine, all 
the gradations from Rational Orthodoxy to the extreme 
of Antinomianism. It is quite evident that such a 
parish was not prepared to carry out the scheme of a 
Presbyterian church, nor did it make any movement in 
that direction. 

Mr. Heywood has left similar notices of the ministers 
who succeeded to those whom he found here before him, 
useful in completing the lists which are left incomplete 
by Mr. Watson, who is, however, to be praised for the 
industry with which he prosecuted his researches into 



80 



THE LIFE OF 



the history of Halifax. I omit them in this work, not 
without some reluctance ; but T must quote at large from 
Mr. Heywood's manuscripts the account which he gives 
of his own predecessors in the chapel of Coley ; " those 
famous men," as he calls them, "into whose labours he 
had entered." We have few such accounts of the series 
of ministers in the lower ecclesiastical foundations. Of 
the early names in this list Mr. Heywood writes from the 
oral information of a person who was eighty-six when 
he conversed with Mr. Heywood in 1664. 

" The first preaching minister after one Sir Adam, 
that was a reader at Coley, was one Mr. Nicholls, who 
was a good scholar, an able expositor, and did good by 
catechizing and expounding. His successor acknow T - 
ledged that he followed him in two places and that he 
had laid a good foundation of knowledge in the people 
where he came. Yet he was addicted to drinking and 
company-keeping. He would have said to his compa- 
nions, ■ You must not heed me but when I am got three 
foot above the earth,' that was, into the pulpit. He re- 
moved from Coley to Thornton chapel, in Bradford pa- 
rish, where he lived very many years, got a great estate, 
had many sons. They all proved very bad ; have spent 
all. He died within this thirty years ; was very ancient. 
(2.) The next that succeeded was one Mr. Gibson, a 
godly man and an able minister, who was tabled at the 
Upper Briar, and afterwards did marry his landlady, old 
Robert Hemingway's wife, but lived not long after that. 
How long he was minister here, I cannot tell. He left 
some plate to the chapel that hath his name upon it, yet 
forthcoming, with a great silver cup gilt with gold, in 
the hands of Mr. Joseph Furnesse, living in Ovenden. 
(3.) Mr. Ralph Marsden was the next minister, a godly, 
orthodox and zealous minister, yet much opposed by se- 
veral professors in this place, as John Lumme, Henry 
Northend, Michael Hesleden, &c, who never rested till 
they got him out. What the first occasion of the con- 
troversy was, I cannot distinctly learn, but it was pro- 



OLIVER. HEYWOOD. 



81 



moted by some sharp expressions delivered by Mr. Mars- 
den in public, which could not be borne. One thing I 
have often heard, that Mr. Marsden living where widow 
Thorp now lives in Shelf, which then belonged to old 
Rhodes of Hipperholm, a prophane man, his tenant de- 
nied him the sacrament. He stormed, and gave him no- 
tice to remove ; having no whither to go, cheered him- 
self, saying ' God will provide an habitation • it may be 
they are now living whom God will remove to provide 
me an habitation.' It was so ; for some persons died out 
of a house upon Northowram Green, where James Briggs 
now lives, and he took it ; removed at May-day follow- 
ing. At this time, in several disputes, there was a meet- 
ing of the chapelry; Mr. Richard Sunderland of Coley 
Hall, being a justice of the peace, stood for Mr. Marsden. 
John Lumme opposed him. Mr. Marsden being turned 
out went into Lancashire ; was curate at Ashton-under- 
Line, Middleton ; was followed with some heavy afflic- 
tions the latter end of his days. Most of his children were 
born here. Four sons of his were ministers, able men ; viz., 
Samuel, Jeremiah, Gamaliel and Josiah. One daughter he 
had, named Esther, that married Mr. Murcot, a famous 
minister in Ireland, and she was of extraordinary parts ; 
now dead. Had one son bred up a scholar ; I hear he is 
now turned Quaker. Mr. Josiah Marsden, the younger, was 
most eminent, but he is dead in Ireland. His other three 
brothers are living." Mr. Ralph Marsden died June 30, 
1648. Three of the sons were Non-Conformists under 
the Act, and are in Calamy's list. The youngest was 
out of the scope of the Act, having gone to Dublin, 
where he was a Fellow of Trinity College ; he died early. 

(4.) " After Mr. Marsden there came two or three to 
Coley, as Mr. Bourn, Mr. Waugh, stayed a quarter or 
so, but made no settlement. The next settled minister 
was Mr. Robert Hierst [Hayhurst] , born at Ribchester, 
in Lancashire. His brother, Mr. Bradley Hierst, vicar 
of Leigh, turned out upon the Act of Uniformity ; yet 
living at Maxfield, in Cheshire. This choice young man 

G 



82 



THE LIFE OF 



was at Coley seven or eight years, but fell into a con- 
sumption : took his solemn leave in the chapel ; told 
them he had spent his strength with them, he was able 
to preach no more. There was great weeping and la- 
mentation at the parting ; he pined away ; had his mo- 
ther with him, whose breasts he sucked as long as he was 
able ; then died at the Upper Briar, where he was tabled, 
leaving a sweet savour behind him both of sound doc- 
trine and holy life : was much lamented. (5.) After him 
came Mr. Denton, a godly minister, who lived at Priestley 
Green ; had no great matters, yet increased exceedingly in 
the world ; had several children ; continued here several 
years ; above seven. But times were sharp. The bishops 
were at their height. In his time came out the Book 
for Sports on the Sabbath-day, the Oath, &c. He saw 
he could not do what was required, and feared further 
persecution, and therefore took the opportunity of going 
into New En gland ; I suppose about the time that Matthew 
Mitchel and other good men went thither out of these 
parts. But he had little comfort there, because he was 
not altogether of their principles as to church discipline ; 
therefore was unsettled; tost into several parts, till at 
last he returned into Old England about the year 1659 ; 
lived awhile in Essex, and there died # . In his time at 

* In this, the account which Mr. Heywood gives differs from that 
which we find in Mather's ' Magnalia,' where it is said that Mr. Denton 
died in New England. Dr. Mather gives a particular account of Mr. 
Mitchel, who went to New England in 1635, in the same ship which 
carried over Mr. Richard Mather, the minister at Toxteth, in Lan- 
cashire, when suspended by the bishop of Chester. Mr. Mitchel is 
described as a pious and wealthy person. It is a distressing account 
that is given of the calamities which befel him during the few years 
of his residence in that country. Several of his people were killed 
by the Pequot Indians ; his cattle destroyed by them ; and when he 
had moved to another part of the continent, his house, barn and 
goods were consumed by an accidental fire. He was involved also 
in troublesome disputings with other English settlers. He was suffer- 
ing also from the stone, which killed him in 1645, at the age of 54. 
He took with him a son, Jonathan Mitchel, then a boy of eleven 
years of age, who became a celebrated preacher and pastor of a 
church at Cambridge, N. E. He died in 1668, and an oratorical 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



83 



Coley the chapel was enlarged, the new ceiling huilt that 
goes to the north, the seats made uniform, the pulpit 
brought from Halifax, being an old pulpit there oppo- 
site to that which now stands in the church ; for as this 
stands on the south side, so that removed stood north, 
facing the south, at the other great pillar. (6.) After 
him came Mr. Andrew Latham, a godly man, born about 
Prescot, in Lancashire, whose brother, Mr. Paul Latham, 
was parson of Standish. This Mr. Andrew was but a 
young man when he came, but very hopeful, pious. He 
was tabled at Peter Lee's, at Norwood Green ; pro- 
pounded motions of marriage to one Jane Boyle, brought 
up with John Lumme at Westercroft, who opposed it, as 
was thought, because he intended to marry her to his 
son Timothy Lumme, she having a good portion. But 
when the old man was from home, by the assistance, as 
was thought, of his wife, Mr. Latham took her away, 
went to York, Leeds, and married her. John Lumme 
was in an exceeding rage, and could never abide Mr. 
Latham after, but persecuted him violently. Yet the good 
man enjoyed not his wife long ; she presently fell into a 
consumption; he left her weak; took a journey to London 
about some occasions ; she was dead and buried on his re- 
turn. He took on heavily ; preached not the Lord's Day 
after. The first time he preached he took that text, 1 Cor. 
vii. 29, 30. Then came on the war, and he fled with the 
rest when the earl of Newcastle lay with his forces about 
Halifax ; and he light to settle at Bury, in Lancashire, 
and joined with Mr. Ault, they having means allowed 
them out of that sequestered parsonage ; and within a 
year the banished people were returned, but wanted their 
old minister ; divers meetings of ministers and others 
were about it ; but John Lumme and others opposed it, 
though he was generally beloved. Yet he stayed at Bury ; 
married Mr. Thomas Binns, of Halifax's, daughter, by 

writer uses this expression concerning him : " All New England 
shook, when that pillar fell to the ground." There is a large account 
of him in Magnolia, book iv. p. 167. 

G 2 



84 



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whom he had a daughter ; but he fell sick of a consump- 
tion, and died at Bury. Upon his death-bed he earnestly 
desired to see one seal of his ministry, one soul con- 
verted by his labours ; and God at last brought him one, 
a poor woman in Bury parish, that was wrought upon 
by his labours ; in which he took much content, and 
blessed God for that mercy. He was Congregational in 
his principles a little before he died, though he had been 
otherwise, and never gathered any church nor acted as 
an Independent ; but he was a holy man and a useful 
instrument. I have received the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper from his hands in Bolton church in the Presby- 
terian way, not long before he died, and methought his 
garments did shine as he came to me. He was a plain 
and powerful preacher. I believe God did more good 
by his ministry than he knew of. I suppose he was at 
Coley nine or ten years. (70 After him came Mr. Giles 
Clayton, from Altham, in Lancashire, an holy man and 
a serious preacher, though not of eminent parts, yet de- 
sirous to do good ; he was betwixt forty and fifty years 
of age when he came hither ; had a wife, but she died ; 
no child ; was tabled at John Bentley's house in North- 
owram (now William Cleg's) ; continued four or five 
years, then died ; was buried in Halifax church, in that 
chapel that's called Holdsworth's Works. My dear 
mother was buried just besides him. Good Mr. Jollie 
immediately succeeded him at Altham ; and though I 
hear of no great success in his labours, yet I hear a very 
good character of him, that he was an honest man and 
a Presbyterian. He made some attempts to set up disci- 
pline here and enjoy the sealing ordinance, but it would 
not do, he could not effect it ; though he lived here in 
the proper season for that purpose, in the time of the 
Long Parliament. (8.) When he was dead, they got one 
Mr. Cudworth, a good scholar and a holy man as was 
hoped, and a good preacher ; but so exceedingly melan- 
choly that it obscured his parts and rendered himself and 
labours less acceptable. He lived in Northowram, in 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



85 



some rooms in Robert Broadley's house, where Joseph 
Crowther now lives, and in a melancholy humour, he 
would not have gone to the chapel on a Lord's Day when 
people have been waiting for him, but said he could not 
preach, and so caused a disappointment. At other times, in 
public he would have expounded a chapter in the forenoon 
till almost twelve o'clock, and fallen to preaching after, 
and so kept them out of time. So that he tired people 
that they fell off from him, and he could not stay. He 
was not at Coley above a year, yet in that time he would 
have gathered a church in the Congregational way ; but 
the Christians in that congregation being not of that 
persuasion did not encourage him in it ; and so he did 
nothing and was glad to go away. I think he had been 
at Lightcliffe before ; and went from hence to Beeston, 
Ardsley, Ossett, and was not long resident anywhere ; 
was very poor ; built a house with difficulty upon the 
Common at Ossett; cast himself into debt; travelled often 
to London about an augmentation ; at last died ; left a 
widow and several children that are now got up ; have 
shifted pretty well ; live in Wakefield. In them God 
remembered his covenant." 

Mr. Heywood has left similar notices of the members 
of several families who formed the body of his parish- 
ioners at Coley. The principal of them were of the 
names of Lumme, Oates, Best, Whitley, Cooper, Brooks- 
bank, Butler, Slater, Northend, Drake, Bradley, Scott, 
Baxter, Dickson, Hemingway, Thorpe and Crowther. 
As pictures of domestic manners and evidences of ge- 
nealogy these notices have their value ; some of them 
are instructive. In the eyes of Mr. Heywood there were 
great virtues and enormous vices to be found in his 
little flock. They make part of a volume containing 
valuable matter for the topographer, which he entitles, 
' The History of Coley.' 

The family of Sunderland had been in the earlier part 
of the century the owners of Coley Hall, and were by 
far the most considerable persons in the chapelry. They 



86 



THE LIFE OF 



were a liberal as well as a wealthy family, but they were 
on the point of leaving this part of the county when Mr. 
Hey wood settled here. Mr. Langley Sunderland, the head 
of the family, was an officer in the Royal army, and by ex- 
penses incurred in the king's service and by sequestra- 
tions when the war was over, had become reduced to 
the necessity of selling his estate at Coley, which he did 
in 1652, when he removed the family to Ackton, near 
Pontefract, never to return # . The purchaser of the 
estate was Mr. William Horton, of Barkisland, in another 
part of the parish, who let Coley Hall to tenants. 

The most remarkable of the persons by whom the 
Hall was inhabited was captain John Hodgson. At the 
beginning of the civil wars he was at the chapel at 

* Mr. Hey wood says that he sold the Coley estate for 2000/., but 
that the whole estate in the parish of Halifax, which he sold, was of 
800/. a-year, and that he had but 100/. a-year when he lived at 
Ackton, where he died in 1698, at the age of 81. An uncle of Mr. 
Langdale Sunderland gave the land on which the Free Grammar 
School founded by Matthew Broadley was erected at Hipperholm, a 
work which was completed in 1661. This uncle was Mr. Samuel 
Sunderland, of Harden, in the parish of Bingley, who died in 1677, 
at the age of 74. He got a large estate in trade in London, as did 
another brother (both born at Coley Hall) named Peter. Both these 
brothers fined for alderman, and both were public benefactors, Peter 
endowing a lecture at Bradford. 

On the night of the 11th of May, 1674, the house of Mr. Samuel 
Sunderland, at Harden, was broken into by nine thieves, who bound 
all the persons in the house, and broke open his chests, out of which 
they took 2000/. in silver and about 500/. in gold pieces. Notwith- 
standing this, he continued till his death to keep large quantities of 
specie in his house, and Mr. Heywood relates of him, that the day 
before he died he caused his chests to be opened where the money 
was lying closely wedged, and took a solemn farewell of it. He lived 
penuriously, and at his death had 17,000/. in money and 1200/. 
a-year in land. He made several endowments, and was a benefactor 
to Hipperholm School beside having given the land. This school, 
which is at a short distance from Coley Chapel, unlike in this respect 
to many of the rural grammar schools of Yorkshire, has flourished 
and been a truly valuable institution. Mr. Heywood gives a particu- 
lar account of the foundation of it. Captain Hodgson was a princi- 
pal means of getting the money left by Broadley for the purpose, 
which was withheld for nearly twenty years. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



87 



Coley one Sunday morning when Mr. Latham was 
preaching, when a person came running in, telling the 
people that Sir William Savile had attacked the neigh- 
bouring town of Bradford, and was threatening destruc- 
tion to the people who had retired for safety into the 
church. Mr. Latham immediately began "to enlarge 
upon it in the congregation with a great deal of tender- 
ness and affection," I copy the words of captain Hodg- 
son himself # , " so that many of us did put our hands to 
the plough with much resolution, being well appointed 
with necessary weapons ; and coming down to Bradford 
found the enemy ready to make an attempt upon them 
in the kirk. But we gave them no time ; but with a 
party of club-men or such as had scythes layed in poles, 
fell upon their horse on one side, and the musketeers on 
the houses that were ready to storm the church on the 
other side, and so beat them off, took several of them 
prisoners that were got into the houses, and had taken 
their guns but that we wanted a scattering of horse." 
This was the first action of the war in these parts of York- 
shire and the first beginning of Mr. Hodgson's soldier- 
ship. He immediately accepted an ensign's commission 
in Lord Fairfax's army, where he soon became captain, 
and was engaged in many considerable actions in the 
course of the war. When it was over he returned to 
Coley, where he acted as a justice of the peace in the 
Commonwealth times. He was a thorough Republican 
and Independent, but having all the zeal and piety of 
Mr. Hey wood, there was a great intimacy between them, 
notwithstanding their difference of judgment, and his 
name will frequently occur as our narrative proceeds. 

A more remarkable man who had made this parish his 
place of residence had left it about five years before Mr. 
Heywood settled at Coley. This was Sir Thomas Browne, 
of whose residence here there was a strong tradition, 
first committed to writing by Midgely and published in 

* Original Memoirs during the great Civil War. Edinburgh, 8vo. 
1806, p. 94. 



88 



THE LIFE OF 



1708, but discredited by Mr. Watson. It has, however, 
been distinctly proved to be correct, by recent re- 
searches, which have brought to light two letters, pre- 
served in the Sloane Collection at the British Museum, 
addressed to Sir Thomas Browne at Norwich, after his 
removal to that cityj from Dr. Henry Power at Halifax m . 
These letters place the fact of his residence there beyond 
all doubt. The Halifax tradition is, that he wrote the 
Religio Medici at Shibden Hall, a house at which Mr. 
Hey wood sometimes visited, between Coley and Halifax. 
It would have been interesting to have known in what 
light such a person as Sir Thomas Browne appeared in 
the earlier years of his life to one who looked upon him 
from the point of observation at which Mr. Heywood 
was placed ; but I find not the slightest mention of him 
in Mr. Heywood's papers, neither indeed of the Religio 
Medici, which was no work for a Puritan. 

Of taste, intelligence, refinement, there appears to 
have been little at Coley ; and, on the whole, few places 
could be less promising and less eligible to a young man 
fresh from the University. But this was immaterial to 
Mr. Heywood ; his single aim having been then, as ever 
afterwards, to preach the gospel with energy, constancy 
and success, regardless of the absence of other objects of 
interest, dead to the suggestions of ambition; and caring 
little whether the seed were sown in rude and unculti- 
vated minds or in a finer soil, provided it took root and 
bore fruit to life eternal. 

For the first four years of his residence at Coley he 
lived in the house of one of his parishioners named Richard 
Best, a wealthy carrier and dealer in wool, who lived at 
Landimer in Shelf. He was a kind of Nabal, rich, co- 
vetous and churlish ; " the epitome," says Mr. Heywood, 
"of carnality, worldliness and carelessness." But he 
found in him " a notable school-book, and occasional 

* A Collection of Letters illustrative of the progress of Science in 
England, formed by J. O. Halliwell, Esq., and published by the 
Historical Society of Science. 8vo. 1841, p. 91. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



89 



teacher in the then infancy of his ministry, learning from 
him what are the carnal pleas and cavils of misguided 
souls." He laments that he was unable to produce any 
change in the habitual thoughts of this person, who died 
in 1660*. 

In 1654 he removed to Godley House, which he hired 
of Nathan Drake, one of a numerous family seated from 
very early times in the Shibden valley, and which pro- 
duced, when they had emigrated from Halifax, several 
persons whose names are eminent in the literature of 
England. Here Mr. Heywood commenced house- 
keeping in union with his brother, Mr. Nathaniel 
Heywood, who had just become the minister of the 
chapel at Tllingworth, as successor to Mr. Clarkson, 
and was lately married. When last we spoke of him 
he was at Cambridge. When he had finished his stu- 
dies there he spent some time in London, " to hear 
famous preachers," and then returned to Lancashire, 
where he was received into the family of Mr. Edward 
Gee, a noted Puritan, who had the church of Eccleston. 
He lived two years with Mr. Gee, and " became moulded 
in his method, manner and practice." He there became 
acquainted with Mrs. Elizabeth Parr, of the Wood in 
Eccleston, a relation of Dr. Richard Parr, bishop of 
Sodor and Man, to whom Mr. Gee had been chaplain. 

* The situation of this family at the time of Mr. Heywood's first 
acquaintance with them deserves to be put on record, on account of 
its great singularity. Best married about the year 1618, and had 
three children, whom he named John, Michael, and Mary. Each 
of these married, and died before the father, each leaving an only 
child. After this the father married a second time, to his servant, 
and had again three children, to whom he gave the same names, 
John, Michael and Mary, who all grew up and married. Such a 
state of things would mock the efforts of the most expert genealogist 
who should attempt to discover the actual facts by the aid of wills 
and the other means of recovering genealogical truth. A better turn 
of mind appeared in some of the descendants : Martha Best, the 
daughter of the first-named John, became the wife of Joseph Daw- 
son, who was an ejected minister, and both of them were through 
life intimate friends of Mr. Heywood. 



90 



THE LIFE OF 



This was the lady whom he married. Illingworth was 
the first place at which he settled as a minister ; but 
he was less fortunate than his brother at Coley. He did 
good, but had potent adversaries, so that after two years 
stay he willingly accepted a call to Ormskirk, in his own 
county, where he continued to exercise his ministry till 
he was silenced by the Act of Uniformity. 

Mr. Heywood had a severe illness while living at 
Godley House, and there was for awhile little hope of 
his recovery. In this house the eldest daughter of his 
brother Nathaniel was born. 

In 1655 he removed to a house which he hired in 
the village of Northowram, a house to which he returned 
again as the possessor, after having left it for several 
years and gone to reside in another part of his chapelry. 
He took this house apparently in contemplation of his 
marriage. 

Tiie lady with whom he united himself was Mrs. Eli- 
zabeth Angier, the daughter of John Angier, of Denton, 
— " holy and peaceable Mr. Angier," as a contemporary 
describes him, one of the most eminent of the Presby- 
terian ministers of the time. This was the Mr. Angier 
to whom he was accustomed to go with his mother to 
hear his affectionate and awakening discourses, and in 
whose house it had been intended to place him when he 
left Cambridge. There appears to have been everything 
in the connection to make it suitable to Mr. Heywood's 
character, position and objects ; and he himself thought 
it highly honourable to him that he had made it, for there 
was no minister of the time who had wrought himself more 
completely into the respect and affections of the gentry of 
his neighbourhood than Mr Angier, and there was cer- 
tainly none who had more influence than he through the 
whole Christian community around him. Mr. Angier 
was connected by his second marriage with Margaret 
Moseley with the wealthy and powerful family of that 
name in the neighbourhood of Manchester. The first 
wife of Mr. Angier, and the mother of his daughter, was 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



91 



Ellen Winstanley, by whom Mr. Heywood was allied to 
the Horrocks' and some other Lancashire families of 
note among the Puritans of the time before the wars. 
Mr. Angier himself was a native of Essex, brought up 
under one of the fathers of Puritanism, Mr. John Cotton, 
of Boston, who removed to New England, whither Mr. 
Angier had the intention of accompanying him, but was 
dissuaded from it by the relations of his wife, and by 
Francis Critchlaw, Mr. Heywood's uncle, a circumstance 
on which Mr. Heywood afterwards reflected with much 
satisfaction. Thev prevailed with him to remain in Lan- 
cashire, where he was first at Ringley Chapel, but being 
suspended at that place for want of sufficient conformity, 
he removed to Denton, one of the chapels of the parish 
of Manchester, where the remainder of his life was spent. 
As for the lady, Mr. Heywood speaks of her as " the 
mirror of her age for accomplishments and piety." 

They went through the old ceremony of hand-fasting 
or espousing. This was done in Mr. Angier's study a 
month before the day appointed for their marriage. The 
entire day was spent in prayer, except that there was a 
sermon preached by Mr. Nathaniel Rathband. At the 
close of it the parties were contracted, The banns were 
published in the church of Halifax at the close of the 
morning exercise on three Lord's Days. The marriage 
was celebrated on the 24th of April, 1655, at the chapel 
at Denton. A multitude of people were present, to 
whom a sermon was delivered, by Mr. Harrison, of Ash- 
ton-under-Line. Mr. Crew, of Utkington, in Cheshire, 
a great friend of Mr. Angier, presented them with a 
silver bowl, which was long preserved in the family as a 
relic. Of his wife's fortune, 200/. was paid to Mr. Hey- 
wood's father, who, in consideration of it, settled upon 
them lands at Little Lever of the annual value of 1 0Z. 5 
in addition to the Walk Mill and lands at Water-side 
valued at 61. per annum. 

But she lived not long. She was of a sickly constitu- 
tion. Her first child, whom they named John, was born 



92 



THE LIFE OF 



at Northowram on the 18th of April, 1656, and her se- 
cond, named Eliezer, on the same day of the month in 
1657- A third son, named Nathaniel, died in his in- 
fancy. She herself died at her father's house on Sunday, 
May 26, 1661, at the age of twenty-seven. Mr. Hey- 
wood drew up an account of her blameless life and 
pious end. 

And while on these domestic affairs, it may be men- 
tioned that at his house at Northowram died his good 
and pious mother. Her death occurred at the time of 
the birth of his second son, when Mr. Angier was also 
a visitor at Northowram. Two or three days after its 
birth the infant was taken to the chapel to be baptized. 
Mr. Angier preached. The grandmother was present. 
On the next morning she appeared equipped for her 
journey home to Lancashire. Her unfitness to under- 
take the journey was perceptible to every one ; indeed, 
symptoms of speedy dissolution soon manifested them- 
selves. She was taken to her chamber, and at one 
o'clock she expired. It was the 22nd of April, 1657. 
On the 24th her body was laid in Holdsworth's Works, 
a part of the church at Halifax rich in Puritan dust. 
There lie the remains of Mr. Boys, the lecturer, and of 
two of Mr. Hey wood's predecessors in the chapel at Coley. 
There also, in due season, was Mr. Hey wood himself 
interred. Mr. Booth and Mr. Bentley were also buried 
there. Their tombs, as well as that of Dr. Holdsworth 
himself, were plucked up, when Mr. Wilkinson, a later 
vicar, caused great alterations to be made in the fabric of 
the church. Mr. Bentley preached at Mrs. Heywood's 
funeral, from the remarkable text which she had chosen. 

These particulars of Mr. Heywood's domestic history 
could not with propriety be omitted. In the next chapter 
we shall proceed with his public conduct as a minister. 

Before the death of his wife he had left the house at 
Northowram and removed to Norwood Green, a house 
which he hired of Thomas Oates. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



93 



CHAPTER VI. 



MR. HEYWOOD'S ORDINATION. REMARKS ON ORDINATION OF MINI- 
STERS. HIS INTRODUCTION OF DISCIPLINE IN HIS CONGREGATION 

AT COLEY. OPPOSITION TO IT J CONSEQUENCES. PROPOSALS OF 

REMOVING TO YORK AND PRESTON. THE HOGHTONS. COMPLETE 

POLITICAL TRIUMPH OF THE INDEPENDENTS AND OTHER SECTARIES. 

ATTEMPT AT FRIENDLY UNION BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS 

AND INDEPENDENTS. MR. NEWCOME, OF MANCHESTER. POLITI- 
CAL MOVEMENTS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS. SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S 

RISING. INCREASED ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS 

AND INDEPENDENTS. MR, HEYWOOD TAKEN BY A PARTY OF COL. 

LILBURN'S TROOP. HIS BITTER REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL 

AND ECCLESIASTICAL STATE OF THE TIMES. SPIRIT IN WHICH HE 

LOOKED TO THE KING'S RESTORATION. OTHER MINISTERS THE 

SAME. 

Nothing material occurred to Mr. Hey wood during the 



acceptable discharge of his duties, and he was satisfied 
with the opportunities which were afforded him both of 
private study and public usefulness. 

" Still," he says, " he did not look upon himself as a 
minister in office, but a probationer and candidate for 
the ministry.' 5 This arose from his not having yet re- 
ceived ordination. He adds, that he could not have 
gone on without it with that comfort and confidence that 
afterwards he did. 

There was not in the county in which he was now 
settled any regularly constituted body of ministers to 
whom he could apply, at least not in the parts of the 
county with which he was conversant*. His thoughts, 

* Though the Presbyterian church was never established as a 
national measure, and only in Lancashire and London was such a 




94 



THE LIFE OF 



therefore, naturally turned to his native county, where 
the Presbyterian system was in complete operation, and 
particularly to the Second or Bolton Classis. He pro- 
posed himself to them as a candidate for ordination, and 
the proposal being favourably entertained, the ceremony 
was performed in the church of Bury on the fourth of 
August, 1652. 

Some indulgence seems to have been allowed him in 
the point of age. He presented certificates of his un- 
impeachable conduct, and of his call to the ministry by 
the people of Coley. Four of the older members of his 
congregation accompanied him to bear their oral testi- 
mony, and to be witnesses of what passed. The pro- 
ceedings began by an examination of him in divers parts 
of learning # . He then defended in Latin the thesis, 
that it is lawful to baptize infants. He delivered a ser- 
mon on Romans x. 15. Then, in the midst of solemn 
prayer, and before a great assembly of people, the mi- 
nisters present laid their hands upon his head as he 
kneeled before them. When this was done, Mr. Til- 
church formed as far as a single province could go, there were in 
many parts of the country during the Commonwealth times associa- 
tions of ministers, under the denomination of Classes, for the purpose 
chiefly of ordination. But these were only voluntary associations, 
while the Classes in Lancashire rested on the basis of the law of the 
land. One of these voluntary unions was of the ministers in the 
south parts of Yorkshire. They seem, indeed, to have been pretty 
general. 

* The examinations were severe. " Beside other matters touch- 
ing the work of grace in his own soul, his ends in desiring the mi- 
nistry, and his direct call to the place where he would officiate, the 
expectant must give a satisfactory account of his skill in the Greek 
and Hebrew tongues, in logic, philosophy, and divinity, and also 
exhibit a thesis upon a question given in Latin, and defend it in the 
same language against the syllogistic opinions of three great scho- 
lars." — MS. Life of Martindale, before quoted, — who was examined 
by the Manchester Classis, and approved ; but when his Si quis was 
placed on the church door, eleven persons of his parish where Inde- 
pendent principles had found their way and brought with them, as 
usual, cavilling and dissension, objected ; "whereupon he went to 
London and was ordained by a Classis of ministers there. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



95 



desley delivered an address on the duties belonging to 
the ministerial office. The instruction it contained was 
" excellent and profitable." The whole service must 
have been solemn and impressive ; and so it appears to 
have been regarded by the multitude present ; for Mr. 
Hey wood says " there were many tears poured forth 
that day, partly in thankfulness for return of prayer, 
partly for further increase of grace ; with great impor- 
tunity and enlargement in petitioning a blessing upon 
that day's work." When he wrote those words he 
would think of his mother, who must have been pre- 
sent, and whose heart would be amongst those which 
overflowed in joy and fulness of hope and thanksgiving. 
How little have the successors of these men in the Pres- 
byterian ministry thought of what they were about, to 
suffer a service like this to have fallen into disuse ! "It 
hath often been much satisfaction to my spirit," observes 
Mr. Hey wood, " in the midst of my troubles to review 
my regular entrance to the ministry. I had the unani- 
mous call and consent of the people ; by fasting and 
prayer, and imposition of hands, I was set apart to the 
great office ; and I have found abundantly more assist- 
ance in my ministerial duties than I did before ; the 
Lord having borne up my heart with more comfort, 
confidence, courage, and enlargement ; yea, and hath 
made my labour more profitable and successful." Surely 
the important duties of the ministerial office will be per- 
formed more usefully to the people, and more satisfac- 
torily to the minister, when he looks upon himself as 
having entered upon a path from which there is no re- 
turn, and as being separated from the world in the 
peculiar manner practised from the beginning of Chris- 
tianity for this peculiar work ; as having thus special 
duties and special defences in the discharge of them, 
and as bound in conscience and duty to observe his 
ordination vows with the same strictness as his marriage 
vows made in the same sacred place, and in the midst 
of similar solemnities. 



96 



THE LIFE OF 



The objections to the service are, that it is supersti- 
tious, and that it conveys an impression of something 
which those concerned in it do not themselves suppose 
to exist. But do they who infer superstition consider 
how that word may be applied to any and to every 
thing connected with a religious profession and prac- 
tice, and that in point of fact there is nothing in a reli- 
gious and Christian practice which some persons have 
not been found to denounce as superstitious : infant- 
baptism, for instance, the Lord's Supper, or even the 
institution of a ministry at all ? Even Christianity it- 
self was once, we know, in ancient times denominated 
a superstition, and the number is not few of persons 
who so regard it now. In fact superstition is, more 
than anything else, relative and arbitrary. That may 
be superstitious to another which is not superstitious to 
me ; and it is at least hazardous in a Christian to de- 
clare any service of his religion superstitious which is so 
strong in primitive precedent and scriptural authority as 
ordination by " the laying on of the hands of the Pres- 
bytery." And as to the impression which it conveys, 
perhaps we know not very well what that grace was 
which the laying on of the apostles' hands actually con- 
veyed ; and still less what the laying on of the hands of 
persons not apostles, but only ministers, pastors, or 
bishops ; and in the same uncertainty we may still in- 
nocently leave it. 

Some think also that the distinction which it esta- 
blishes between minister and people is injurious. But 
is the separation of some persons to the practice of the 
healing art, and of others to the interpretation and 
practice of the law, and giving them monopolies, rank, 
titles, and privileges, which distinguish them from other 
men, an evil in the state of society in which we live? 
Why then shall we presume evil in a similar state of 
things respecting those whose peculiar study is theology, 
and peculiar duty to maintain a healthful state of the 
public morals and the influence in society of Christian 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



97 



principles ? — surely a high, honourable, and important 
office, not to be entrusted but to competent and recog- 
nised hands. It is not pretended that ordination will 
of itself give a man the graces and virtues which become 
a minister, or alone entitle him to the respect and con- 
fidence which it is desirable should be conceded to all 
who sustain that character ; but it marks him as having 
been worthy to bear the office in the opinion of compe- 
tent judges. It may happen that some persons may be 
thus prevented from engaging in duties belonging to the 
ministerial office which they might discharge respectably 
and usefully. But the same thing might be said of the 
fences which surround other professions ; and yet it can 
hardly be doubted that on the whole it is for the public 
good that such fences should exist, that in fact some 
guarantee should previously be taken of fitness to dis- 
charge the duties of professions to which peculiar privi- 
leges are given, which necessarily implies distinction : 
and that if some who might be useful are kept out of 
the ministry by it, others are kept out who would take 
on them the character without preparation, and without 
either moral or intellectual fitness. 

On the question — by whom the ordination should be 
performed, whether by bishops, as successors of the 
apostles, and a distinct order, or by presbyters, — I do 
not now enter, further than to observe, that the pub- 
licity of the Presbyterian ordinations, while the Presby- 
terian discipline existed, seems to have been a favourable 
circumstance, both as respected the candidate and the 
people, whose hearts were then open to receive instruc- 
tion on the expectations they had a right to entertain 
from the person then admitted into the office of minis- 
ter, and on the other hand of the duties which they 
owed him : nor would the ceremony lose anything of 
its solemnity by the presence of so many reverend mi- 
nisters, some of them truly irpeofivrepoi, standing on 
the brink of the grave, delivering, as it were, the torch 
of Christian truth to younger hands, to be by them held 

H 



98 



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out in the world and transmitted in due time to another 
generation. I know not how others may think of it, 
but I have never so strong an impression of the reality 
of the history on which our faith rests as when partaking 
of the Supper of our Lord, and thinking of myself as 
one in the long succession of people who have sat down 
at that table even from the beginning : but I question 
whether the unbroken series of ordained ministers of 
the church is not even a still more striking and forcible 
proof. We ought surely to have paused and reflected 
before we broke this polished chain of evidence. 

The ministers who laid their hands on Mr. Heywood 
were Mr. John Tildesley of Dean, Mr. John Harper and 
Mr. Richard Goodwin of Bolton, Mr. William Ault and 
Mr. Tobias Fourness of Bury, Mr. Peter Bradshaw of 
Ainsworth, Mr. Jonathan Scholefield of Heywood Cha- 
pel, Mr. Thomas Fyke of Radcliffe, Mr. Henry Pendle- 
bury of Holcomb, and Mr. Robert Bath of Rochdale. 
They were all Puritans and Presbyterians. Four of them 
died before the Act of Uniformity in 1662 ; all the rest 
were of those whom their posterity frequently designate 
as the Bartholomean worthies. 

Seven years of much private comfort and public use- 
fulness had passed at Coley when the mind of Mr. Hey- 
wood became disturbed with the notion that there was 
a material defect in the way in which he was proceed- 
ing in his pastoral duties. The thought issued in a re- 
solution, and this resolution involved him in endless 
disputings, and was the beginning of many troubles. 
There is too often a restlessness in minds full of religion 
and benevolence uncomfortable to the parties themselves, 
and inconvenient to those connected with them ; and 
hence it is that the institution is a wise one, which sets 
certain metes and bounds about the path of ministers, 
wise, as respects the ministers themselves, and as re- 
spects the peace of the people to whom they minister. 
The case was this : — For many years, even from the be- 
ginning of the war in 1642, there had been no celebra- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



99 



tion of the Lord's Supper in the chapel of Coley. This 
was a deficiency which the minister was bound to see 
supplied ; and all would have been right had he revived 
the ordinance, and at stated times administered it. In 
this he would have received general support. But this 
was not enough to satisfy him. He could not bring 
himself to think of receiving in confidence those who 
came, that they came in sincerity and with a sufficiency 
of humility, faith, and repentance. Nothing would sa- 
tisfy him but such previous examination as he had 
known practised in Lancashire to ascertain the amount 
of Christian knowledge which the applicant possessed, 
and the proficiency which he had made in the divine 
life, and then to receive or to reject. In short his plan 
was to confine " the sealing ordinance," as the Puritans 
called it, to a select body of his parishioners only. 

Here then necessarily arose a very material question. 
It was no less than this, — whether the people, for whose 
use the chapel of Coley had been built and endowed in 
former times, had not a right to partake there of this 
ordinance without subjecting themselves to an examina- 
tion which might not be agreeable to those whose purity 
of life would bear the closest inspection, and which must 
have been very repugnant to any persons in whom sor- 
row was silently working out the fruits of repentance. 
There might be also those who would feel it a kind of 
duty to oppose themselves to a power which admitted 
of the term inquisitorial being applied to it, and who 
entertained less exalted ideas of ministerial prerogative 
than seem at this period to have possessed the mind of 
Mr. Heywood. His intentions were perfectly pure, but 
he ought to have foreseen the opposition which would 
arise, and that he was taking a course which would end 
in his finding himself to be the pastor of but a portion 
of his flock. 

The state of religious parties in his own chapelry and 
in the chapelries around him, might also have shown 
him that he was entering on a path of great difficulty 

h 2 



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and danger. He had some families of zealous Inde- 
pendents in his chapelry ; and there were Quakers near 
him who saw nothing but superstition in the ordinance, 
and usurpation in the office of minister. Naylor, the 
noted Quaker, was a native of Ardsley and a member of 
the Independent congregation at Topcliffe, both between 
Coley and Wakefield. 

We cannot perhaps fully determine how far these 
considerations were present to his mind, or whether he 
drew the distinction between a parish -minister in a pub- 
lic chapel and a minister who has collected about him a 
voluntary association of persons by whose contributions 
he is supported. But having once formed the resolu- 
tion, with that pertinacity to his purposes which is evi- 
dent in the whole course of his history, he determined 
to persevere. A meeting was called of the inhabitants, 
when he laid before them his plan. It was proposed 
that the triers should be chosen by the people, and re- 
port only to the minister. But when they came to the 
point of electing the triers, no person was found who 
had sufficient confidence in himself or the system to 
accept the office. Nothing daunted, Mr. Heywood still 
persevered, and at last succeeded in gathering from his 
flock a select society in the midst of many heart-burn- 
ings. But the harmony of the chapelry, and much of 
the comfort of the minister, were gone. 

Mr. Heywood's own account of this affair must be 
given: — "In process of time, when I had continued 
almost seven years in this congregation, I was convinced 
of my duty to endeavour to set up discipline, and restore 
the ordinance of the Lord's Supper ; which, after many 
disputes and carnal reasonings, I set upon and made 
the attempt. I had many discouragements in my first 
thoughts thereof, and loth was I to engage in such un- 
trodden paths, it being uncouth and odious in the coun- 
try. My first work was to preach many sermons about 
that weighty subject, partly to stir up in believers a de- 
sire thereof, partly to show the way to the obtaining it, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



101 



and preparation for it, and suitable dispositions fit for a 
profitable participation of it : and at last fell to execu- 
tion. T desired a meeting. Many came ; and when I 
had acquainted them with the way I aimed to take, and 
desired them to make a choice of some that might assist 
me in the work (though that could not be yielded to), 
then I resolved to do what could be done myself. I 
entreated all those that desired to partake of that ordi- 
nance to acquaint me therewith, that I might discourse 
with them about the main fundamentals of religion, for 
I confess it hath always been my principle that grossly 
ignorant and scandalous are to be debarred that sealing 
ordinance. There came to me above a hundred and 
twenty persons, from most of whom I received abundant 
unexpected satisfaction, and found more knowledge, true 
piety, and convictions of conscience than I had before 
that made account of. Many were exceeding glad of 
this opportunity they had to open their condition to me, 
who had been long hindered that way by prejudice, oc- 
casions, and many temptations. I found it so refreshing 
and encouraging to me, that it did abundantly compen- 
sate my labour if I had made no further progress in the 
work than only obtained so much acquaintance with 
the spiritual state of so many souls. And when I had 
finished that work, I communicated the names of such 
as I had dealt withall to the whole, and earnestly en- 
treated that if any had any just grounds of exception 
against any, that they would discover it before we pro- 
ceeded to administration ; and though there were many 
secret surmisings, yet no objectors appeared : and for 
those that were yet groundedly suspected of visible un- 
worthiness, though none could or would stand up to 
debar them of encroaching, yet the Lord acted that 
part, and by the forenoon's sermon pricked their con- 
sciences and diverted their intentions from sitting down, 
which might, I fear, have been a great distraction to 
some Christians. Yea, others resolving to stay, though 
not submitting to order, and so to disturb us, were 



102 



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driven back, and we know not how, unless by the spe- 
cial and signal hand of God immediately there. We 
enjoyed the ordinance peaceably and comfortably, and 
it was very precious and profitable to the souls of such 
as had been long waiting for the salvation of God. 
This was the first ordinance that we have enjoyed, or 
that was administered, since these late uncivil civil wars 
in this perplexed nation, and it was a day of gladness 
and feasting, for the joy of our Lord was our strength : 
and having obtained help of God, w T e have continued in 
the frequent and usually monthly celebration thereof 
above these two years, and gives us grounded hopes of 
the further continuance thereof." Seventy-three per- 
sons appear to be the whole number who actually joined, 
the first name being that of Luke Hoyle, Mr. Hey wood's 
especial friend. 

I proceed with Mr. Hey wood's own narrative : — " But 
as every good work meets with opposition either from 
pretended friends or professed foes, and as usually the 
way of God or virtue lies betwixt two extremes, so that 
it is ordinarily crucified betwixt two thieves ; so here, 
on the one hand, some directly oppose making any dis- 
tinction at all, but w T ould have all to lie common, and 
would have the blood of Christ prostituted to all comers, 
yea, contemners of it : these beat down purity with the 
odious charge of novelty. On the other hand, others, 
pleading for an unwarrantable groundless separation, 
would be wise and righteous overmuch, and screw up 
the pin beyond the reach of the word, and lay that 
stress on circumstantials which the Scriptures do not, 
and we dare not. These are apt to challenge us with 
conformity and compliance with the world, and with 
looseness in our principles and practices. From both 
sides I have received grievous bufferings, and many 
fondly say the latter hath been far more prejudicial to 
my work and afflictive to my spirit than the former. 
The wicked of the world will be meddling and shooting 
hasty bolts. David was the drunkard's song : and every 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



103 



one hath a reviling flout to bestow on such as walk not 
in their road, though condescending as far as they can 
possibly. But, alas, it is not so much wonder if these 
be not skilled in these weighty matters, and parable be- 
seems not the mouth of fools ; and if these hate strict- 
ness and break all bonds asunder that may hinder them 
in the pursuit of easy lawless liberty,- — that is, their design 
and custom is their reason, and their will their law, and 
thev are wiser in their own conceit than ten men that 
can render a reason ; these we may not think strange as 
if their licentious practice put them at catching hold of 
licentious principles to indicate the same, and fret and 
fume when great Diana falls, and cry after their 1 privi- 
leges/ to which they have no right, as Micah after his 
Gods, yet would be indulged in ignorance, vanity, and se- 
curity: — though those have sometimes pleaded zealously 
for me, and would have put me in their bosoms, and 
pretended so much love as though they would have 
plucked out their right eyes (yet, notwithstanding, sus- 
pecting their principles, I depended not upon them, and 
durst not trust their fond and groundless affection), now 
at last, because I crossed their humour, they railed at 
me, and would almost pull out my eyes in violent con- 
tradiction, and use their utmost endeavour to thrust me 
out of place. Truth it is, I expected no better from 
them, but worse. But I may say with David, it was 
my familiar friends and intimate associates, yea, I hope 
(some of them), sincere Christians, that are the greatest 
trouble to me ; and in this they are worse, because I 
expected better. Yea, some that have professed en- 
deared love to me as their spiritual father, these, pre- 
tending scripture grounds, would throw the nation and 
congregation into a confused chaos, if they may model 
new churches and lay a new foundation, disparaging and 
despising the old principles and professors that have 
been of so many years' standing in this place. Would 
they join their hands with ours in reforming abuses, and 
build upon the old foundation, we should gladly join 



104 



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with them and might be mutually helpful each to other, 
and lay no more stress upon relating experiences and 
joining in a covenant than the Scriptures do, and for 
their right and limited ends # ." 

There is a great deal of very important matter in this 
too rhetorical passage. One thing is clear, that Mr. 
Heywood had wrought himself into the affections of his 
people, whatever might be their judgment in the disputes 
of the time about Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, or Inde- 
pendency. All seem to have loved and reverenced him 
alike. Why could he not be satisfied with such an 
opening for infusing Christian principles, and for keep- 
ing his simple mountain flock in the paths of duty in 
the way to heaven ? He has, however, not yet fully 
opened the mischief which was done, for his narrative 
proceeds thus: — ' - Truth it is, my earnest desires after 
peace and unity for our own advantage and mutual 
edification put me upon studying many means for com- 
posing our differences, and frequent meetings together 
for accommodation in what we could, that wherein we 
were agreed we might walk together in love, especially 
those common and confessed truths and ways of God 
that neither Satan, nor our common adversaries that 
watch for our halting and bear an equal ill-will to us all, 
might not insult over us divided, whom they durst not 

* In the volume of ' Soliloquies,' which I have not seen, he says, 
when speaking of this affair, after having expressed his thankfulness 
at the thought of having carried his scheme into effect, — " Who 
would have thought so great a work could have been carried on so 
far, managed by so weak an instrument, with so little assistance, and 
in the midst of so much discouraging opposition ! Surely the hand 
of the Lord was in all this ! Though we were a poor despised com- 
pany of weak individuals, deserted, if not opposed, by the rich in the 
congregation, who would not put their necks under the yoke of Christ, 
yet hath the Lord helped us in the discharge of our duty. When 
some threatened they would offer themselves at the ordinance to see 
if I would pass them by, the power of God's word did so prevail that 
they withdrew from their intended design." — The Life of the Rev. 
O. Heyivood, by the Rev. Richard Slate, prefixed to his Works, 8vo, 
1827, vol. i. p. 52. 



OLIVER HEYVVOOD. 



105 



meddle with united. And for this end I used all the 
means I could, and condescended as far as well I durst, 
so as not to wrong conscience, that we might meet in 
one : yea, so much am I delighted with the name of 
peace (dulce pads nomen), that I have cause to be jea- 
lous over myself lest I lose a grain of salt for an ounce 
of peace. I have gone to the utmost that my principles, 
conscience, and the word of God would reach, that I 
might become all things to all men ; but, alas, our 
meetings and complyings have done little good, nay, 
it's well if it have not done some hurt, though acci- 
dentally ; for the Lord is witness to the singleness and 
sincerity of my heart and aim in these undertakings, 
though the prejudices of men have put various miscon- 
structions thereupon." 

It is manifest that there w r as an end to his general 
usefulness in the character of a village pastor, to whom 
all looked up to be fed, that he must henceforth look 
upon himself as united in the bonds of Christian affec- 
tion with those only who formed his select society, 
while the rest would attend his ministrations only 
through habit or convenience. This was a great change 
and a great evil • but it was of the less consequence, as 
greater changes were at hand, and he was about to be 
removed from his public station at Coley. It was on 
the same rock that his brother split at Illingworth. 

There can be no doubt that Mr. Heywood's views in 
this matter were not only pure, but high ; that the whole 
plan had its origin in a sense of duty and a serious re- 
gard for the spiritual interests of the persons committed 
to his charge. If there were in it anything of earthly 
concretion, it was a little too elevated an idea of the 
value of pastoral superintendence, or perhaps of minis- 
terial superiority. His love for his whole people cannot 
be questioned ; and if what he relates of some of the 
more wealthy families among his parishioners be true, 
it might have been well for them, here and hereafter, if 
they had adopted other means than those which they 



106 



THE LIFE OF 



thought sufficient to strengthen the influence of Chris- 
tian principles in their hearts. 

His love to them was put about this time to the test. 
Looking at Mr. Hey wood's position at Coley in what it 
would be too harsh to call a merely worldly point of view, 
looking upon it, I mean, as a field of exertion to a man of 
talent and education, and as a place in which suitable so- 
ciety to such a person was to be obtained, few situations 
would appear to be less desirable ; but he resisted, about 
this period, a temptation to remove to a scene of greater 
usefulness, where he would have been more in the eye 
of the world, and where he would have found many 
congenial minds. In fact, about this period of his life, 
when his eminent ministerial abilities began to be known, 
he had two opportunities of removal. One of them was 
to the church of Saint Martin in York ; the other, in which 
he appears to have had more difficulty in determining 
the course he would take, was to Preston in his native 
county. His call to Preston was clear and complete, 
for he had the nomination of Sir Richard Hoghton # , 

* This was the baronet, of Hoghton-Tower, in the neighbourhood 
of Preston. He died in February 1678. The sermon, preached at 
his funeral by Dr. Seth Bushell, is printed. A high character is> 
given of him as a person of great worth and honour, and esteemed 
in the several relations of public and private life ; but he is not cele- 
brated for any peculiar strictness in his religious profession. Mr. 
Heywood, speaking of his death, says that " he was a favourer of 
good things, though no great zealot." His wife, Lady Sarah Hogh- 
ton, who was a daughter of the first earl of Chesterfield, was ac- 
counted "very eminent for religion," and it was probably at her 
suggestion that there was an intention of bringing so zealous a mi- 
nister as Mr. Heywood to Preston. After the Act of Uniformity this 
family had service conducted by Non-Conforming ministers, — Mr. 
Ainsworth, Mr. Sagar, and Mr. Kaye. Mr. Tong, in his ' Life of 
Matthew Henry,' speaks of her as " a great patroness of religion and 
non-conformity" (p. 197). She was living in 1693. There was a 
regular Non- Conforming congregation formed under her patronage 
and that of her son, Sir Charles, who was a correspondent of Mr. 
Heywood. Sir Charles died in 1710, and was succeeded by his son, 
Sir Henry Hoghton, who died in 1768 at the age of eighty-nine. 
To him succeeded the younger Sir Henry Hoghton, his nephew, who 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



107 



the patron of the living, and the unanimous concurrence 
of the people. At Preston also the discipline was esta- 
blished which he was attempting to introduce at Coley. 
There were other coDsiderable advantages. His reasons 
for declining it are not very apparent, and we may be- 
lieve that his affection for the people who first called 
him to the ministry prevailed over the inducements pre- 
sented to him ; to which, however, must be added, the 
advice of his father-in-law, Mr. Angier, who said to him, 
" It is ill transplanting a tree that thrives well in the soil." 

It was in the year 1657 that Mr. Hey wood made his 
attempt "to set up discipline" at Coley. Whether he 
looked upon it as a step towards the establishment in 
those parts of the county of York of a Presbyterian 
Classis, we cannot tell ; but the scheme looks very like 
an attempt to establish a Congregational Eldership. In- 
dependency, however, was at that time quite in the 
ascendant, and any Presbyterian efforts must needs be 
ineffectual. It had indeed been so ever since the battle 
of Worcester, and it might perhaps have maintained its 
ascendency had not there been perpetual schisms in the 
Independent congregations themselves, some shooting 
off as Anabaptists, and many as Quakers, to say nothing 
of the minor sects. This was the certain and inevitable 
consequence of the encouragement they gave to lay- 
preaching, when there was no control over the " gifted 
brethren" but what the particular congregation might 
possess. 

This was not, however, without active opposition on 
the part of the Presbyterians, on whom this duty de- 
volved ; the Royalists and friends of the Episcopal church 
being at that time a discomfited and apparently a ruined 
party. The opposition was not merely in the form of 

was the last baronet of the family who took much interest in the 
affairs of Non- Conformity. 

Mr. Heywood relates some strange circumstances which attended 
the death of Sir Richard Hoghton ; — that the wheel of his mill went 
backward ; — that a dumb man warned him of his death by signs, &c. 



108 



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paper-controversy, but political also. Soon after the 
battle of Worcester, while on the one hand the loyal 
earl of Derby was put to death, the Presbyterian warden 
of Manchester, Mr. Heyrick, was placed in confinement 
at Lambeth ; and in Lancashire, Mr. Hollingworth, 
Mr. Harrison, Mr. Gee, Mr. Latham, Mr. Johnson and 
other ministers, including even peaceable Mr. Angier, 
were placed under arrest for supposed political disaffec- 
tion to the new order of things, and as having actually 
excited the people to revolt. The effect of that battle 
was the consolidation of the power of Cromwell, the 
curtailed Parliament, and Independency. 

So completely was the power of the Presbyterians 
broken, that the Provincial Assembly, which had been 
constituted in London and which met half-yearly, dis- 
continued their meetings in 1655, " finding themselves/' 
says Neal, "without power, and not being willing to 
apply to the Protector and his Parliament for support." 

Ill did the Presbyterians brook the ascendency which 
the less respectable part of the Puritan body had thus 
gained in the state ; and much did they deplore the rise 
of various discordant sects, and the dissensions which 
arose in consequence in almost every parish, on one 
ecclesiastical question or another. But they were with- 
out remedy : they had broken down the ancient govern- 
ment of the church, without having strength to establish 
another, and the consequence necessarily was the state 
of religious anarchy which they saw and lamented ; so 
that they had only themselves to blame, — too impatient 
perhaps, as those who administered the government of 
the church had been too severe. 

The friends of peace sought to promote it by attempts 
at union where the parties had not shot out into the 
wilder extravagances of the time. In particular, in the 
south of Lancashire, there was an attempt at union be- 
tween the Presbyterians and Independents, as far as there 
could be union between parties composed of elements so 
essentially different. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



109 



A meeting was held at Manchester on the 13th of 
of July, 1659, at which certain terms of agreement were 
settled. They are expressed in very general words, and 
do no more than bind the two parties to the mutual ex- 
change of civilities and the laying aside " all unnecessary 
distances and unbrotherly carriages," which did not be- 
come ministers of a common Gospel. Mr. Heyrick, Mr. 
Harrison, Mr. Angier and Mr. Newcome were among 
the first to subscribe the terms on the part of the Presby- 
terians # . 

This is the first time that the name of Mr. Newcome 
has appeared, and as he soon came to take the lead in 
the affairs of the Lancashire Presbyterians, and as, con- 
sequently, his name will frequently occur as we proceed, 
it may be proper to state here that he was about two 
years older than Mr. Hey wood, and had studied probably 
at the same time with him in the University of Cam- 
bridge. He was one of many sons of Stephen Newcome, 
who was rector of Caldecote, in Huntingdonshire. He 
is described by Dr. Calamy as "a hard student, and of 
great proficiency in philosophy and theology." He was 
at the beginning of his ministry settled at Gaws worth, in 
Cheshire, from whence, in 1656, he removed to Man- 
chester to succeed Mr. Hollingworth, and at Manchester 
he spent the remainder of his life, which was continued 
to 1695, first as a clergyman of the Presbyterian church 
of Lancashire as long as it existed, and afterwards as 

* Similar attempts at union among religious parties were made 
about the same time in other parts of the kingdom. See Life of 
Philip Henry , 12mo, 1698, p. 60 : — The ministers in his neighbour- 
hood, the borders of Shropshire and Wales, " appointing particular 
associations, and (notwithstanding the differences of apprehension 
that were among them, some being in their judgments Episcopal, 
others Congregational, and others Classical) they agreed to lay aside 
the thoughts of matters in variance, and to give to each other the 
right hand of fellowship ; that with one shoulder and with one con- 
sent they might study each in their places to promote the common 
interest of Christ's kingdom, and the common salvation of precious 
souls." See more valuable matter on this point in the place re- 
ferred to. 



110 



THE LIFE OF 



the pastor of the Presbyterian Non -Conformists in that 
town. He married a lady of the family of Mainwaring 
of Cheshire, by which marriage he became connected 
with many of the principal families of that county, and 
brother-in-law to a remarkable but very different man 
of those times, Elias Ashmole, the alchemist and herald, 
and the learned author of the History of the Order of 
the Garter # . 

The union of the Lancashire Presbyterians and Inde- 
pendents, which was in fact rather a cessation of hostili- 
ties than a union, was to begin on the fourth Thursday 
of the September following ; but the whole design came 
to nothing, and the two parties became still more widely 
estranged, in consequence of certain political movements 
in which Mr. Heywood may be said to have had some 
share, as he was a sufferer in consequence of them. 

As long as Cromwell lived and retained his popularity 
with the army, any attempt of the Presbyterians would 
have been but in vain to regain the power which they 
had held for so short a time, or to re-establish that mo- 
narchy which they had sought not to destroy, but to 
place under constitutional restraint, or the church which 
they meant not to remove, but to reform ; the power of 
the sword was above them, and they had nothing to do 
but to sit on the ground by the side of the Royalists, and 
to sigh over the disappointment of all their hopes. But 
the removal of Cromwell made way for weaker minds, 
and there was a succession of persons who usurped the 
sovereign power without being able long to retain it. 
This revived the spirits and hopes of the Presbyterians, 

* The sons of Mr. Newcome were Conforming clergymen ; and 
several of his descendants have been in the church and ornaments 
to it. One of them was bishop of Rochester. I am not certain 
whether Newcome the archbishop of Armagh descended from New- 
come of Manchester, but if not from himself it was from a very near 
relative. Most of the Conforming Newcomes were of the class of 
English clergy called Liberal ; and the same may be observed in 
other families of Presbyterian extraction who have gone into the 
church, the Disneys, Dawsons, and others. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



Ill 



who, weary of the intolerable tyranny of the Sectaries, 
began to contemplate, as the only means of relief, the 
recall of the king, and the restoration of the old constitu- 
tion, but, as they hoped, with stronger checks on the 
prerogative, and greater liberty for the ministers of re- 
ligion. 

Early in 1659 there were several communications be- 
tween the leaders of the Presbyterian party and the king. 
The intention was that there should be simultaneous 
risings in various parts of the kingdom. The design 
was however a perilous one, and some persons who were 
early engaged in it dared not venture to show themselves 
openly ; so that, with the exception of a single movement 
atDerby # , there was only one outbreak of any moment, 
the principal seat of which was in the northern parts of 
Cheshire along the borders of south Lancashire. 

The leader in this movement was the younger Sir 
George Booth, of Dunham Massey, who had lately suc- 
ceeded to the title and estates of his grandfather, an old 
Sir George Booth, of whom Clarendon says, that he was 
" of absolute power with the Presbyterians." Sir Thomas 
Middleton, of Chirk Castle, joined with him. In the 
month of August in that year, Sir George Booth ap- 
peared at the head of a small force hastily collected, and 
marched upon Chester, of which he took military pos- 
session. He published a manifesto, in which he says, 
that " since God had suffered the spirit of division to 
continue in this nation, which was left without any set- 
tled foundation of religion, liberty and property, the 
legitimate power usurped at pleasure, the army raised at 
their expense misled by their superior officers, and no 
face of government remaining that was lawfully consti- 
tuted," they had therefore taken up arms in vindication 
of the freedom of Parliament, &c, but without the least 

* This movement was on the 12th of August, known at Derby 
by the name of ' White's Friday.' Colonel White appeared in the 
town, declaring against the usurping powers, and was supported by 
all the ministers in the town, except one. 



THE LIFE OF 



mention of any design to bring back the king. That he 
rose with that design is however sufficiently manifest by 
two commissions from the king, dated the 22nd of July 
and the 9th of August, by which he was constituted 
commander-in-chief of all forces raised for His Majesty's 
service in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales*. It 
was principally through the influence of Mr. Cook, a 
Presbyterian minister at Chester, that Sir George Booth 
was admitted into that city, which was a strong garrison 
town, just as a few months later general Monk owed 
his ready admission into York in a great measure to 
another minister, Mr. Edward Bowles f. Many of the 
ministers both in Cheshire and Lancashire were privy to 
Sir George Booth's intentions, and favourers of his de- 
sign. But the movement was premature. Lambert was 
sent against him with a body of disciplined troops, and 
Sir George Booth imprudently marching out of Chester, 
was defeated at Winnington-bridge, near Northwich, 
his army entirely routed, and himself soon after taken 
prisoner. The whole was over in nineteen days. No- 
thing but the strength of a disciplined army like that 
commanded by Monk could have brought back the king 
in triumph. 

The reports of the loss of his friends which reached 
Mr. Heywood were appalling : but, in fact, Lambert acted 
with great moderation, which I add on the testimony of 
a minister who was in the secret of the rising before it 
took place, but who deemed it the more prudent part 
not to appear in it. — "And though it went on to a 
battle, yet Lambert, whatever were his ends, was not 

* The reader is particularly referred to The Peerage of England, 
8vo, 1735, vol. ii. p. 479, 480, for documents which throw a strong 
light on Sir George Booth's intentions in this movement. 

\ On this important event in the history of the king's restoration 
I may be permitted to observe, that there is by far the fullest and 
most particular information ever given to the public, in a narrative 
written by Sir Philip Monckton, which the late Lord Galway kindly 
allowed me to insert in The History of the Deanery of Doncaster, 
fol. 1831, vol. ii. p. 416. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



113 



eager to shed blood. He took off his men from pur- 
suing the foot, which they would soon have ruined, 
saying, 'Alas! poor men, they are forced and hired;' 
and sent them after the horse, which were better fitted 
to escape, and to them also free quarter was given when 
they fell into their enemies' hands # ." The whole num- 
ber of the slain did not exceed thirty ; and thus ended 
the first Presbyterian movement towards the restoration 
of the king, and with it of ecclesiastical order and stable 
government. It was the first and only time in which 
persons who were on both sides of the Puritan family 
were arrayed in the field against each other. 

Most of the Presbyterian ministers who had been for- 
ward in this affair, or were suspected of being concerned 
in it, were seized: Mr. Cook, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. 
Joshua Kirby, the lecturer of Wakefield, were placed in 
prison at Lambeth. Mr. Newcome, Mr. Robert Seddon, 
Mr. Henry Finch, Mr. John Crompton, and Mr. James 
Bradshaw, all Lancashire ministers, are said by Calamy 
to have been favourers of the design. Mr. Newcome was 
ever after an intimate friend of the Booths, who were 
soon after the Restoration raised to the peerage. Mr. 
Angier was prudent : " He stayed at home," says Mr. 
Hey wood,, " though his heart and prayers were that way, 
and he foresaw the event." Mr. Philip Henry wrote thus 
in his private diary: "Lord, own them if they truly 
own thee !" and when he was blamed by some persons 
for not giving thanks publicly for the defeat of Sir George 
Booth, he answered, that " his apprehensions concern- 
ing that affair were not the same with theirs : we are now 
much in the dark, never moref." 

* MS. Life of Martindale. 

f See Life of Mr. Philip Henry, 12mo, 1698, p. 65. He was the 
father of Matthew Henry, a name better known as being the author 
of an 'Exposition on the Scriptures', which continues to be highly 
valued. The name of Henry was exchanged for that of Warburton 
by the son of Matthew Henry ; but the male line has been long 
extinct, while the descendants of the elder Henry are exceedingly 

1 



114 



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The natural effect of this movement was, that the 
two parties in the Puritan body should be still further 
estranged, and their jealousies and animosities become 
more bitter. It was now quite evident to the Independent 
mind that the Presbyterians looked to something more 
than the mere establishment of their own principles and 
the ascendency of their own party, and that it was no- 
thing less than bringing back the king and restoring a 
national church, either in the Episcopal or Presbyterian 
form, or in some form in which the two systems might 
be united, which to some persons of those times ap- 
peared practicable, among whom was Archbishop Usher. 
The authorities then in power required that public 
thanks should be given for the suppression of Sir George 
Booth's insurrection. This was an ensnaring matter for 
the Presbyterians. 

The bitter feeling which this movement occasioned 
was not confined to the parts of the kingdom which were 
the particular scene of it ; it extended to the neighbour- 
ing counties : and we must now relate what happened 
to Mr. Hey wood, and it shall be done in his own words, 
giving the few facts and his own reflections : — 

"While we were consulting an accommodation suit- 
able to the uniting of godly parties on both sides in our 
neighbour county, in comes an overflowing deluge in 
the state that promotes divisions in the church. Sir 
George Booth with many other gentlemen, pleading their 
liberty to sit and vote in parliament with the rest of 
their members then sitting at Westminster, at last took 
up arms in Cheshire ; with whom the Presbyterians ge- 
nerally acceded and consented, and the Independents 
took the other side throughout the nation ; which as it 
rendered all former endeavours fruitless and an agree- 
ment almost hopeless, so it set a vast distance amongst 

numerous, and most of them have remained members of the Presby- 
terian body of dissenters, to which some of them have been both a 
support and ornament. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 115 

us in this congregation : many of our adversaries being 
deeply engaged in the late defection, thought they were 
bound in conscience (or from what principle or end 
they did it I know not) prosecuted against me as one of 
those they looked upon as traitors and rebels. Yet, 
whatever their ends were (the Lord knows, I shall not 
judge), but this I know, they dealt most injuriously with 
me, as though they intended to trepan me. They came 
to discourse with me, pretendedly in love and friend- 
ship, and got what they could out of me in state- affairs. 
And then, when they saw their opportunity, threatened 
they had in writing a charge against me uttered unawares 
by my own lips. And their own jealousy helped them 
to invent other things wherein they imagined I was 
guilty, though far otherwise ; and I may truly say, as in 
the presence of God, they laid to my charge things that 
I knew not, nor did they ever enter into my thoughts ; 
they wrested my words, and when I desired liberty to be 
mine own interpreter, if it were contrary to their ground- 
less surmisings, they called and accounted me a liar. 
They condemned me without trial, and when a con- 
siderable appearance of my people came to own me at a 
meeting, they would scarce give them or me leave to 
speak in my behalf ; some of them openly contradicted 
me by sending a note to me in the middle of my sermon 
to distract me, though, blessed be God, it prevailed not 
to do me much hurt. They trampled scornfully upon 
me, as scarce worthy to live, some of them saying they 
could not tell how to trust their bodies with me, much 
less their souls ; that they could not sit down under any 
man's ministry that would not obey authority, though 
themselves were the most disobedient, changing them at 
their pleasure many times in a year if they suited not 
their ambitious and covetous humours, and though thev 
could never charge me with disturbing the peace in word 
or action. But this I must confess, I could never say, 
Amen, to their prodigiously irregular actings, nor act 
against my conscience, for I must obey God rather than 

i 2 



116 



THE LIFE OF 



men. I could not, durst not, dissemble with God and 
man, in giving God thanks for what I was convinced was 
real matter of humiliation. I kept in the compass of 
my place and calling, and was freely content to be passive 
in suffering the penalty inflicted for the breach of their 
new-made laws ; yea, such was their carriages towards 
me that their own party elsewhere disclaimed them, and 
were ashamed of them, and voted some of them blame- 
worthy in a church-meeting, and the country did so ring 
thereof that the reproach thereof will never be wiped 
off. Truth it is, that this was such a provoking occasion 
(the circumstances considered) for the commotion of my 
spirit as I never had before, that T could very ill brook 
or bear, and I found great need of special grace and an 
opportunity to practise some of the hardest lessons in 
Christianity, — to bear injuries without desire of avenging 
myself, to suffer grievous indignities patiently without 
animosity, when wrongfully imposed to forgive freely, 
pray for such as despitefully used me, to love mine ene- 
mies, and to overcome evil with good, &c. I never knew 
what those lessons meant till now, and I may say by 
sweet experience the Lord helped me in these cases in 
good measure. By the help of grace I have not used 
perverse reflections against them in public, nor did it yet 
enter my thoughts to do them the least hurt, if I had 
them in my power ; nay, I can truly say, the more they 
wronged me, the more I prayed for them. 

" About the same time we had sharp trials. My wife 
was brought to bed of a third son, and when she had 
lyen but two days I was taken prisoner by a party of 
horse sent from Col. Lilburne, and I was taken to 
Brigge-house, but by the mediation of divers of my 
neighbours who undertook for me, I was released, after 
I had been among the unruly soldiers one night ; and 
within that fortnight, my little son Nathaniel died, 
Aug. 24, 1659 ; and the sad news of our dear friends' 
and countrymen's killing and dispersing was more bitter 
than all the rest. At which time these men triumphed 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



117 



over us with intolerable pride ; threatened sequestration, 
shot off a pistol by our window, and had once, tantum 
non driven me from my dear people. Once, indeed, I 
did resolve to go within a day or two, but being better 
advised, I thought it best to abide their trial, for I knew 
myself not guilty, no not in the breach of their own 
laws. But God hath his times and seasons in clearing 
up the innocency of his people ; he hath wonderfully 
owned the cause of his afflicted people, and rescued both 
out of the furious hands of one extreme that sought the 
destruction of ministry and ordinances under the notion 
of sanctity. And though in eschewing Scylla, we be now 
fallen upon Charybdis, yet God will fully reckon with and 
totally subvert the professed haters of the power of god- 
liness, especially when he hath accomplished his recon- 
ciling work upon the hearts of his people, and effected 
all his other works upon Mount Zion. Satan is come 
down and hath great rage because his time is short ; 
and short I hope it will be, for he hath promised that 
for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened, yet 
sharp it may be, for God hath a sad reckoning with us." 

I shall add one passage more from Mr. Heywood's 
reflections at this period on the state to which the pre- 
valence of Independency, and the encouragement which 
the Independents gave to lay-preaching, had brought the 
country : — 

" Oh, what a blow hath true religion sustained, under 
pretence of harmless opinions about mere circumstantial 
points, whereas they raze the foundations ! We were 
weary of monarchy, but shall be more weary of anarchy. 
Is there no one to sit at the helm of the ship of our poor 
commonwealth, but an army of rude unruly and con- 
tentious soldiers ? The sword of justice is drawn to 
support injustice, and the power of authority encourages 
such as do evil, and discourages those that do well. 
Were not ministers once the chariots and horsemen, the 
strength and beauty of our English Israel ; but are they 
not now the scorn and offscouring of this world ? Those 



118 



THE LIFE OF 



silly ignorant people, that admired at learning and almost 
worshipped scholars, now trample all under their feet, 
and would have universities demolished, literature ba- 
nished, and darkness introduced. Do we not see illite- 
rate, haughty and presumptuous soldiers and artificers 
perched up in congregations and without controul op- 
pose sound doctrine, sow tares, and teach the people to 
despise and malign the pious, prudent, faithful, peace- 
able and learnedly religious pastors?" 

En queis consevimus agros ! The true lesson which 
these reflections teach is, that it is the wisdom of those 
who desire nothing more than that peace and justice 
shall have their abode in the land of their birth and their 
delight, but above all of scholars and those who culti- 
vate what are especially arts of peace, rather to acquiesce 
in a little evil that may be perceived in the political 
state, whether civil or ecclesiastical, which has been 
long established, trusting to the silent power of time to 
remove it, than to open the way to a worse tyranny by 
endangering its stability. Whether the oppression of 
the Puritans under the early Stuarts was sufficient to 
justify revolt, when the Puritans themselves acted at least 
as oppressively to the loyal episcopal clergy, may be 
questioned ; but there can be no question that the state 
of things which Mr. Heywood describes was very dearly 
purchased by the dreadful havoc and misery which the 
civil wars occasioned # . 

* I cannot forbear inserting in this page a beautiful passage from 
Fuller, though it has been so often quoted. Speaking of the death 
of Mr. John Dodd in 1645, he says, " He was buried at Fawsley, 
in Northamptonshire; with whom the old Puritan may seem to expire, 
and in his grave to be interred : humble, meek, patient, hospitable, 
charitable, as in his censure of, so in his alms to, others. Would I 
could truly say but half so much of the next generation !" This was 
written in 1653. — Church History, book xi. p. 220. 

Let scholars, and especially theological scholars of the Liberal 
school, read what happened to Hales of Eton, in those times. He 
was brought down from his moderate competence to " bread and 
beer," and little more which he obtained by the sale of his library, 
being, as is pleasantly said by his biographer, Dr. Pearson, " a true 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



119 



But when such were the reflections of Mr. Heywood, 
who had been nursed in political and religious disaffec- 
tion, what must have been the thoughts of those, many 
of them, it cannot be denied, worthy and pious persons, 
as they were also refined and learned, who had been 
turned out of their stations in the Church, and were 
condemned to a perpetual silence ? and when we thus ar- 
rive at a knowledge of what was passing in the interior 
of a mind like his, we are prepared to find the enlight- 
ened and worthier part of the population concurring in a 
wish for the return of the exiled king, and for the burst of 
joy, such as was never before witnessed in England, wel- 
coming him to our shores. The following were the pri- 
vate reflections of Mr. Heywood when he heard that 
General Monk had declared for the king, and that the 
king's arrival was every day expected : — 

" Lift up thine eyes, my soul ! and behold the face of 
things abroad, After a dark and gloomy winter comes 
a heart-reviving spring. What a change has been effected 
in half a year ! Surely there is a gracious moving wheel 
of Providence in all these vicissitudes. Usurpers have 
had the seat of jurisdiction, have held the reins in their 
hands, and driven on furiously these twelve years. They 
commanded a toleration of all but truly tender con- 
sciences, cast off parliaments of their own appointment 
at their pleasure, and threatened sequestration for all 
who would not fall down and worship the golden image 
of their invention." — " Strange events have happened 
between September 1659 and May 1660. God is in the 
heavens and doeth whatsoever pleaseth him ; he hath glo- 
rified his great name, vindicated his truth and promises, 
and encouraged his people. He hath restored our civil 
rights, and given us the hope of a just settlement." 

The feeling which is thus expressed by Mr. Heywood 

Helluo of hooks." But what is worse than their own personal fate, 
the great interests which the scholar has at heart are amongst the 
first things to be sacrificed to the young ambition which arises out 
of the opportunities which have been unthinkingly afforded it. 



120 



THE LIFE OF 



was common to the great body of ministers with whom 
he is to be classed. They were weary of military rule 
and of ecclesiastical irregularity. Of Philip Henry it is 
said, by the writer of his Life, that " He was a hearty 
well-wisher to the return of the king, and was much 
affected with the mercy of it;" and it is added, "His 
sense of that great mercy of God to the nation in the 
unbloody, peaceable and legal settlement of King Charles 
the Second upon the throne was the same with that of 
multitudes besides, both ministers and others, that were 
of the quiet in the land" The Manchester Classis di- 
rected that the *24th of March, 1660, should be observed 
as a solemn day of thanksgiving for the wonderful 
changes and deliverances which were looked for from 
the declaration of General Monk. Mr.Newcome addressed 
the people of Manchester in a strain of vehement in- 
vective against the persons who had abolished monarchy 
for their own selfish ends, and nearly destroyed religion 
itself, ending with an exhortation to be temperate and 
Christian in their joy : " He that hath caused it toward 
evening to be light, can make our sun set at noon. La- 
bour to be Christians still, and to carry like Christians 
under this wonderful mercy ; for the Christian hath not 
had the least hand in the procuring of it." This sermon 
he printed, and dedicated to the then leading Presby- 
terians in Lancashire, Sir George Booth, Sir Ralph Ash- 
ton, and Richard Holland, esquire, of Denton. 

Mr. Heyrick preached on the day of the king's coro- 
nation, from the words, "And he brought forth the 
king's son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him 
the testimony, and they made him king and anointed 
him ; and they clapped their hands and said, God save 
the king !" — " You see," said he, " what the want of a 
king is, and by that you will the better judge of the 
blessedness and happiness of the people that have a king ; 
kingly government is the best government for order, 
peace and strength." 

Mr. Nathaniel Heywood preached at Ormskirk on the 



OLIVER REYWOOD. 



121 



day of the thanksgiving for the king's Restoration, from 
2 Sam. xix. 30, "And Mephibosheth said unto the 
king, Yea, let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the 
king is come again in peace unto his own house.' ' 

I have been the more abundant in my citations and 
references on this subject, because an opinion very gene- 
rally prevails among the present representatives of the 
persons whose principles and conduct we are considering, 
that they were in politics against kingly government, and 
in ecclesiastics against a national church. Nothing how- 
ever can be further from the truth. The mistake has 
arisen from confounding the fathers of Presbyterian dissent 
with the fathers of Independent or Congregational dissent 
and the members of the different sects who sprung up under 
the Independent rule. They undoubtedly preferred the 
government, or rather anarchy, from which England was 
delivered at the Restoration ; but the Presbyterians looked 
upon that event as a relief from an unsettled, turbulent 
and oppressive usurpation, when the power shifted from 
hand to hand every few months, at the will of an igno- 
rant soldiery, and as bringing back security and order. 
There was nothing in Mr. Heyrick's eloquent discourse 
which was really inconsistent with the principles of him- 
self and his party, who had taken up arms, not to destroy 
the monarchy, but to fix upon it certain wholesome con- 
stitutional restraints, and not to destroy the church, but 
to make it more efficient in respect of the great interests 
contemplated in its institution. That they had failed, 
and only let in a body of fanatics and usurpers, is but 
the usual fate of well-meaning persons who commit 
themselves to the chances of great political change. 



122 



THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER VII. 

DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE PRESBYTERIANS. POLICY OF THE COURT. 

RETURN OF THE ROYALIST CLERGY. MANY PURITAN MINISTERS 

ALLOWED TO RETAIN THEIR CURES. PROCLAMATION AGAINST 

CONVENTICLES. AFFECTS MR. HEYWOOD. PROHIBITED FROM BAP- 
TIZING. REFUSES TO USE THE COMMON PRAYER. HIS ENEMIES 

IN HIS CHAPELRY. CITATIONS TO YORK. DR. WITTIE. LADY 

WATSON. HIS REFLECTIONS ON CATHEDRAL SERVICES. UNSETTLED 

STATE OF ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. SETTLEMENT BY THE ACT OF 

UNIFORMITY. CHIEF PROVISIONS OF THE ACT. DIFFICULTIES OF 

THE PURITAN MINISTRY IN COMPLYING WITH THE TERMS OF MI- 
NISTERIAL CONFORMITY. THE TWO THOUSAND " BARTHOLOMEAN 

WORTHIES." PRIVATE AND FAMILY CIRCUMSTANCES AT THE TIME. 

THE ELDEST BROTHER. MR. HEYWOOD CEASES TO BE THE PUB- 
LIC MINISTER AT COLEY. 

We are now approaching what may be regarded as the 
great crisis of Puritanism. 

The course which the public policy of the realm took 
on the return of King Charles the Second was in ail respects 
disappointing and most discouraging to every branch of 
the Puritan family ; but it was especially mortifying to 
the Presbyterians, who were still the most numerous, 
substantial and valuable part of that family, to see them- 
selves confounded with the wild sects which had sprung 
from them in the preceding period and subjected to the 
same rigorous measures, and to find no sense entertained 
of their services in promoting the restoration of the 
monarchy, and not the slightest disposition to conde- 
scend to any of their scruples or their opinions in the 
new settlement which it was necessary to make of the 
ecclesiastical affairs of the English nation. 

They seem to have entertained the expectation of 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



123 



something very different, and they conceived that the terms 
of the king's declaration at Breda authorized them to do 
so ; but it must have been sufficiently manifest that, after 
the experience of the last twenty or thirty years, means 
would be taken to secure the nation from the possibility 
of another outbreak ; and the terms of the declaration, 
which go not beyond a qualified and limited indulgence 
of diversity of religious opinion and practice, would be 
little regarded when once the national mind was directed 
to the consideration of the mighty question, in what way 
ecclesiastical affairs should be conducted for the time to 
come ? Their hope of seeing their favourite project of 
a Presbyterian Establishment carried out, they must have 
at once abandoned ; the country did not go with them 
in the design, as had been proved during the short time 
in which they were in the ascendant, and no sovereign 
will ever prefer a Presbyterian to an Episcopal church, 
which is at once an ornament and support to the mo- 
narchy, as it is also really a strong defence of the people, 
throwing, as it does, the broad shield of Christianity be- 
tween them and the oppressor. The utmost they could 
rationally expect was some kind of union of the two 
forms ; but whether the elements of the two systems 
admit of being united, it was too much to expect that 
the attempt would be made when the king was all-pow- 
erful, so great was the enthusiasm with which he was 
received, and there were so many who longed to see the 
pure Protestant Church re-established in the frame in 
which the Reformers had left it. 

There can be little doubt that it was the determination 
of the king's advisers from the beginning to effect the 
restoration of that church, but they proceeded with great 
seeming moderation and the appearance of a conciliatory 
spirit. Two years passed between the king's restoration 
and the final arrangement of ecclesiastical affairs. In 
that time occurred the Conference at the Savoy, which 
resembled the Conference at Hampton Court, and 
ended like that in contempt for the Puritan scruples. 



124 



THE LIFE OF 



The Puritan clergy were received at court with civility, 
and very tempting offers were made to some of them of 
stations of eminence in the church. Baxter, who came 
from the Welsh border, was offered the bishopric of 
Worcester ; Gilpin, a northern man, was offered the 
bishopric of Carlisle, which he declined, and was after- 
wards the Presbyterian minister of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 
Only Reynolds, who was made bishop of Norwich, for- 
sook his party in this crisis of its fate to accept the 
episcopal dignity. 

But while the persons who were at the head of public 
affairs were proceeding with a certain amount of delibe- 
ration and apparent disposition to conciliate, there was 
a general movement among the clergy who had been 
displaced in the late times, and were still alive to rejoice 
in the change which had taken place. The surviving 
bishops resumed their sees, the deans and other ca- 
thedral dignitaries their stalls, and the parochial clergy 
returned to the parishes from which they had been driven. 
In these cases, the Puritan ministers by whom they had 
been replaced in the Commonwealth times were obliged 
to give way, and it does not appear that they could rea- 
sonably complain of this. They attempted, indeed, to 
draw a distinction between ministers who had in the late 
times been removed for political delinquency only, and 
those who had been declared by the parliamentary com- 
missioners to have been unworthy of their benefices, as 
being "ignorant and scandalous;'' but this was over- 
ruled ; and surely it was but fair to assume that sixteen 
years of adversity had produced some change for the 
better, and that another trial should be allowed of mi- 
nisterial sufficiency. The number was very considerable 
of the ministers who returned. 

Where the incumbent who had been removed was 
dead, the ministers in possession of the benefices were 
allowed to retain them without being subjected to any 
inquiry into the manner in which they were put in pos- 
session. This was an important condescension to the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



125 



Puritan ministry, and it seems to have been granted 
equally to the Presbyterian, the Independent, and the 
Anabaptist ; but then it could be considered as only a 
temporary measure, as it cannot be doubted that it was 
determined to restore the Episcopal Church almost im- 
mediately with the authority of parliament, when terms 
of communion would be required with which it was 
known that few of them could comply. 

Mr. Heywood's case came within the scope of this 
condescension, for there was no one to set up any claim 
to his little benefice at Coley. It was the same with his 
brother at Ormsjdrk, who had indeed the presentation 
of the Countess of Derby, w T idow of the unfortunate earl, 
the true and undoubted patron, as well as the approba- 
tion of the commissioners for the admission of public 
preachers. But Mr. Nathaniel Heywood lost at this 
time his appointment of one of the four itinerating 
ministers of Lancashire, with its income of 50/. a-year, 
which gave occasion to a shrew 7 d taunt of the adversary, 
alluding to his restoration text, "Let him take all." 
An amusing collection might be made of the texts se- 
lected by the divines of this period, and of all sides, for 
their political sermons. Mr. Johnson, who returned to 
claim his fellowship in the church of Manchester, on his 
re-appearance in the pulpit, addressed the congregation 
from the words of the 129th Psalm, "The ploughers 
ploughed upon my back ; they made long their furrows : 
the Lord is righteous ; he hath cut asunder the cords of 
the wicked." Mr. Wright, the vicar of Ecclesfield in 
the south of Yorkshire, a milder man, on resuming pos- 
session of his beautiful church and extensive parish, took 
his text from another Psalm, " He that goeth forth 
and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come 
again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him ;" 
and continued to enjoy the benefice from which he had 
been harshly removed (for I have some reason for be- 
lieving that he was an excellent Christian minister) more 
than thirty years. 



126 



THE LIFE OF 



The resuming of their churches by the clergy whom 
the parliamentary commissioners had removed, could not 
always be effected without unedifying scenes being ex- 
hibited. There was a story current at Halifax in Mr. 
Watson's time, that Dr. Marsh, the ejected vicar, made 
his appearance in the church one Sunday morning soon 
after Mr. Bentley had commenced his service, and march- 
ing up the aisle with the Book of Common Prayer under 
his arm, removed Mr. Bentley from the desk in the face 
of the congregation, and conducted the service in the 
ancient manner. Dr. Marsh was soon succeeded by 
Dr. Richard Hooke, a firm, able, and f zealous church- 
man, and probably on that account placed in this im- 
portant situation by the Crown, in whose gift it was. 

But though Mr. Heywood was for the present quieted 
in the possession of his chapel of Coley, he soon felt the 
effects of the change of the times. 

There was an apparent moderation in the proceedings 
of those who directed public affairs, but still there was 
enough to show the Puritan ministry that impediments 
would be placed in their way. Advantage was taken of 
a frenzied insurrection of a few persons in the utmost 
extreme of Puritanism, who were called Fifth Monarch- 
ists, to issue a proclamation prohibiting conventicles, or 
small assemblies of persons in private houses, for the 
purpose of religious conference, hearing the word and 
prayer. This was very hard upon the more sober part 
of the Puritans, to whom these meetings were refreshing 
to their spirits ; and it cannot be denied that the politi- 
cal evil attending them was as nothing compared w T ith 
the support which they gave to the influence of a devo- 
tional and Christian spirit through the land. Such a 
proclamation plainly showed that the authorities of the 
time were looking upon the whole subject in a point of 
view merely worldly, and in a spirit which would sacri- 
fice the interests of religion and morality to merely tem- 
poral security. This was the first of a long series of 
similar acts in the same spirit. Mr. Heywood notices 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



127 



it thus : — " This day, January 23, 1660-1, we had de- 
signed to meet together for fasting and prayer in private, 
but are prevented by a declaration from authority. The 
truth is, our dread sovereign, at the first and hitherto, 
hath allowed us abundant liberty for religious exercise 
both in public and private, but his clemency has been 
abused, which has occasioned this severe and universal 
prohibition. The fanatical and schismatical party, truly 
so called, have by their unwise and unwarrantable prac- 
tices troubled all the people of God throughout this na- 
tion, and have rendered the sweet savour of Christian 
converse to be abhorred." Here is a spirit of acquies- 
cence and submission as profound as any friend to the 
prerogative could desire of any man, and a very innocent 
view of the measures of the court. 

Indeed it appears but too plainly that the Puritan 
ministers saw but imperfectly either their own actual 
position, or the intentions of the court and parliament 
concerning them. They had never sought to cultivate 
the wisdom of this world, by which they might have 
combated with a better chance of success the politicians 
of the time who possessed it in abundance. In fact they 
were confounded and baffled at every turn. Their better 
praise is, that they had the wisdom which cometh from 
above, and this cannot be denied them. 

The next inconvenience which Mr. Hey wood found, 
originated nearer home. He was considering the ques- 
tion of the baptism of infants of scandalous parents, and 
had found himself more perplexed than instructed by the 
arguments on that point of Baxter, to whom the Presby- 
terians of that time and long after looked up for direc- 
tion, when he was surprised by an order from the vicar 
of Halifax to forbear baptizing at all. This was not 
directed against himself in particular, but was addressed 
to all the curates throughout the vicarage, it being the 
vicar's intention that all children should be brought for 
baptism to the parish church. Mr. Heywood, with less 
than his usual candour, attributed the order to an avidity 



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for fees. He continued to perform the ordinance, pay- 
ing over the accustomed dues to the parish-church. 

The next was a more serious difficulty. 

In these two unsettled years there was no uniformity 
in the manner in which the puhllc religious services were 
conducted in the churches and chapels of the realm. It 
appears to have been left to the minister who was in 
actual possession to conduct the services at his own dis- 
cretion, or as could be agreed upon between himself and 
the people. The restored ministers would of course 
bring back the use of the Book of Common Prayer ; the 
Puritan ministers would adhere to the form of the Di- 
rectory, in which the minister was at full liberty, in the 
devotional parts of the service. The difficulty was in 
cases in which the minister was of one mind, and the 
people, or a considerable number of them, of another : 
and this was the case in Mr. Hey wood's chapelry. 
There was a party who earnestly desired that the Com- 
mon Prayer should be restored at Coley, as it had been 
in the parish-church and in some of the other chapels. 
At the head of this party was Stephen Ellis, of Hipper- 
holm, a person of the best account for property of those 
who resided in the chapelry, and, as far as anything ap- 
pears, a respectable man ; zealous however in his own 
way, as Mr. Hey wood was in his. At his suggestion, 
and with the concurrence of some other persons, the 
book was brought to Mr. Heywood as he was about to 
commence the service in his usual manner. This was 
on Sunday the 25th of August, 1661. Mr. Heywood 
asked the person who presented it by what authority he 
did so ; but to this no reply was made, the person con- 
tenting himself with laying it on the cushion of the 
pulpit. Mr. Heywood took it quietly down, and having 
laid it in the lower pulpit (the reading-desk, which it 
would appear from this anecdote he did not use, but 
conducted the whole service in the pulpit, as has been 
the usual practice of the successors cf the Presbyterian 
ministers since), went on with the service in his usual 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



129 



manner. " I was wonderfully assisted that day in pray- 
ing and preaching, so as many were amazed, as since 
they have told me ; and it satisfies me I did but my duty 
in what I did, upon my former convictions." 

There was something of the insolent humour attributed 
to the people of this parish in the mode in which the 
party proceeded ; but in respect of the main question, 
there was no very clear right on either side. It cannot 
be denied that Ellis and his friends had a claim to a rea- 
sonable share of the direction of parish affairs in this 
particular, nor can it be denied that in the then unsettled 
state of the church Mr. Heywood might consult his own 
judgment on what it was proper to do. He could not, 
however, contend for his own right of enforcing his 
own views on this subject upon his people without set- 
ting up the principle of clerical imposition, which had 
been so much complained of by the Puritans from the 
beginning. 

In such an incident as this we see the absolute neces- 
sity of some third party who can determine with author- 
ity questions such as these, which must, from the nature 
of things, perpetually arise in religious communities, and 
which, in point of fact, have arisen on this very subject 
of the comparative value of free prayer and a liturgical 
form in many dissenting congregations. Mr. Ellis ap- 
pealed to such a party. At his suggestion, William 
Greenwood, an attorney, who had lately become an in- 
habitant of the chapelry, applied to the Consistory Court 
at York for a citation to Mr. Heywood to appear and 
answer the said Greenwood # . 

The citation was served on the 13th of September. 

* Greenwood was a Skipton man, who had recently become con- 
nected with Coley by his marriage with the widow of one of the 
Whitleys of Cinderhills, near the Chapel, a debauched and profligate 
family of good property. The shocking deaths of persecutors has 
been in all ages a favourite topic with Christian writers. Both hus- 
band and wife died in consequence of being thrown from horseback 
a few years after,— she in 1664, and he in 1668. The Whitleys had 
suffered by sequestrations in the preceding times. 

K 



130 THE LIFE OF 

It was the first case of the kind. Mr. Heywood was 
advised to appear, that he might not be excommunicated 
for contempt. As he journeyed towards York he met 
accidentally with old Elkana Wales, who had long been 
the Puritan minister in the chapel of Pudsey, and his 
son-in-law, James Sales, another minister of the same 
character. They gave him every encouragement to de- 
fend what he had done. On his arrival at York he went 
immediately to the Minster, where the Court was then 
sitting in the accustomed place on the north side. 
They were engaged with other affairs, but the attention 
of the whole Court was turned on Mr. Heywood the 
moment he was announced. He was asked if he had 
chosen a proctor, and on his replying, that he was there 
in person to answer any charge which might be made 
against him ; he was told that he might go his way, and 
appear again that day three weeks. This might be only 
a form of the Court, but it appears unreasonable and 
oppressive, as does also their refusal to communicate to 
him the charge on which he was cited. 

There came up to him in the Minster, Dr. Robert 
Wittie, the physician, who was then residing at York, 
the author of certain singular books in prose and verse. 
He strongly exhorted Mr. Heywood to stand firm, as an 
example to other ministers who might be troubled in the 
same manner. 

Lady Watson, one of the " elect Ladies,'* of whom 
there were several at that time at York^, great favour- 

* Lady Watson was the widow of a lord mayor, Stephen Watson, 
who twice filled the office in the Parliament times, — 1646 and 1656 ; 
and held her rank according to the tenor of the old York saw : — 
" My lord is a lord for a year and a day, 
But my lady 's my lady for ever and aye." 

We shall meet, as we proceed, with two other ladies at York whose 
rank was of the same kind, — Lady Hewet and Lady Hoyle. Lady 
Hewley, another of the ladies of York who gave encouragement to 
the Non- Conforming ministry, somewhat younger than those I have 
named, was the wife and widow of a knight, Sir John Hewley, who 
was some time member for the city. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



131 



ers of the Puritan ministry, wrote to Mr. Hey wood, 
soon after his return home, intimating to him that the 
Court had no authority in his case, and advising him to 
take no notice of their citations. Instead, therefore, of 
appearing again at the end of the three weeks, he took 
a journey into Lancashire. On his return he found a 
second citation, of which he took no notice. A third 
citation came, to which he did appear. Of what passed 
on this occasion he gives no particular account, and only 
says that "they dismissed him with promises of a fair 
audience the next time." The issue of all was, that he 
was suspended from exercising his ministry in the dio- 
cese of York on the ground of non-appearance and con- 
tempt. The suspension was published in the church of 
Halifax on Sunday, June 29, 1662. On that day he 
took solemn leave of his people at Coley : " on which 
occasion," he says, " he saw more strong workings of 
affection and tears of sorrow than he had ever before 
seen in public." Everything shows how much he was 
beloved by many, and how influential his ministry must 
have been on them. 

This suspension did but a little anticipate his separa- 
tion from his beloved people ; for the Act by which the 
Church was settled in a form in which he could not 
appear as a minister, had before that time received the 
royal assent, and would in a few weeks come into com- 
plete operation. 

One passage from his auto-biographical remains, re- 
lating to his visits to York, must not be omitted, it is 
so characteristic, and shows how truly he was the son 
of the woman who demolished the relics of superstition 
in the places of religion around Bolton: "My heart 
was much grieved when I saw the fond way of worship 
used by them, as I passed by the door, where they were 
then at work. Divers I saw with white surplices, and 
red tippets upon their backs ; their worshipping towards 
the east at singing Gloria Patri ; their singing the 
Lord's Prayer and Creed ; and resounding of the organs ; 

k 2 



132 



THE LIFE OF 



all which they use : though I stayed not then to see and 
hear all, yet I saw enough to make me hate vain inven- 
tions, and to love God's perfect word and pure worship 
better ; to pity and pray for them that mangle and trifle 
with the holy things of God, and turn them into a mere 
formality ; to desire after and to delight in the pure and 
wholesome waters of the sanctuary, and worshipping 
my God in spirit and in truth." Good : — if the worship 
which he witnessed were mere formality ; and undoubt- 
edly, however the hearers may be affected, it is to be 
feared that there is not always a corresponding senti- 
ment in the hearts of those who make the sweet melody : 
and this was possibly all that Mr. Heywood meant. To 
have extended his reflection further, would have been but 
to act in the spirit of those who represent the sin- 
gular aspects of some of the old Puritans when engaged 
in their way of worship as assumed and artificial. It is 
but right to admit, that in both the true spirit of devo- 
tion may be found. As to the magnificent scene around 
him, he appears to have been wholly unimpressed by it, 
whether as a creation of taste and skill, or as a temple 
raised to the honour of the living God, and dedicated to 
his service # . 

* I have before had occasion to speak of the insensibility of the 
Puritan mind to the impressive effect of the places in England of old 
consecrated to the purposes of Christianity ; but let it not be sup- 
posed that this insensibility is common to their descendants and 
present representatives. Who admires more the surpassing edifice 
of which we are speaking than my reverend tutor, the Presbyterian 
minister at York ? I have also now before me a letter from an older 
Presbyterian minister whom I knew in my youth, born in 1728, and 
the great-grandson of Mr. Dawson, one of the ejected Puritan mini- 
sters, the neighbour and very intimate friend of Mr. Heywood, in 
which he says : — "We reached York about four, and amused our- 
selves for more than two hours in viewing the cathedral. I was 
scarce ever so pleased with any structure. Other buildings of this 
nature fill the mind with awe ; this filled mine with reverence and 
delight. It is at the same time light and airy, great and magnifi- 
cent. I could have stayed among the dead and works of antiquity 
much longer with solemn pleasure." Shall I not add, that these 
were the sentiments, written in 1778, of the Rev. Joseph Evans, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



133 



The new settlement of the English Church was done 
in Parliament, which is in effect to say, that it was the 
result of the solemn expression of the national will by 
its admitted organs, — the king, the privy-council, the 
lords spiritual and temporal, the knights of the shires, and 
the burgesses. To call this settlement the act of the king 
or of the bishops, is to make a most important mistake 
respecting it : it was the act of the national will as much 
as any public measure in that or any subsequent Parlia- 
ment (except so far as the recent Reform Act may be said 
to give to the decisions of Parliament more of the cha- 
racter of being expressions of national determination), — 
the issue of the struggle of conflicting parties, in which 
the Puritan party found itself in the minority. Neither 
was the Act the erection of a Church ; it but reinstated 
the Church as it had existed long before, after its tem- 
porary overthrow. 

This memorable Act is the 12th and 13th Charles II. 
chap. 4, and is entitled " An Act for the Uniformity of 
Public Prayers and Administration of the Sacraments 
and other Rites and Ceremonies, and for establishing 
the form of making, ordaining, and consecrating Bi- 
shops, Priests, and Deacons in the Church of England." 
It received the royal assent on May 17, 1662, but it 
allowed to ministers in possession of the benefices, to the 
24th of August following, to ponder over the terms of 
Conformity. This was the feast-day of Saint Bartholo- 
mew, already made remarkable in the annals of ecclesi- 
astical reformation by the massacre at Paris in the reign 
of Charles the Ninth. 

The following are the chief provisions of the Act : — 

(1.) One uniform service, and no other, to be used in 
all churches and chapels throughout the realm ; which 

for thirty-eight years the Presbyterian minister at Sheffield, a gen- 
tleman to whom I and my family owe the highest obligations ? He 
was the executor of my grandfather, the guardian of my father ; and 
to me a wise instructor, a kind and generous friend ; a father, in 
every sense but one. 



134 



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service shall be that of the Book of Common Prayer, 
published in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, with the 
slight alterations which had recently been made in it. 

(2.) Every minister holding any ecclesiastical benefice 
or promotion, to read publicly in his church or chapel 
the said Common Prayer, before the feast of Saint Bar- 
tholomew then next ensuing, and in the presence of the 
congregation to declare his unfeigned assent and consent 
to everything contained in and prescribed by the said 
Book, on penalty of immediate deprivation. 

(3.) Every person in holy orders, and every school- 
master, to subscribe a declaration that " it is not lawful, 
upon any pretence whatever, to take arms against the 
king ; and that they abhor the traitorous position of 
taking arms by his authority against his person ; that 
they will conform to the Liturgy of the Church of Eng- 
land ; that they hold that no obligation lies upon them 
from the oath called the Solemn League and Covenant, 
but that they regard it as an unlawful oath, and imposed 
upon the subjects of the realm against the known laws 
and liberties of the kingdom 

(4.) No schoolmaster to teach without a licence from 
the bishop. 

(5.) No person to hold any benefice or spiritual pro- 
motion who had not received episcopal ordination ; and 
if any such person were already in possession of any 
church or chapel, he was, ipso facto, declared to be de- 
prived of it, and the patron might proceed to appoint a 
person duly qualified. 

(6.) Lecturers or preachers to declare their assent to 
the Thirty-nine Articles mentioned in the Statute of the 
13th of Elizabeth, and no lectures or preachings to be 
had without the use of the Common Prayer. 

(7.) Any person not episcopally ordained administer- 
ing the Lord's Supper, to be liable to the penalty of 
one hundred pounds. 

* The abjuration of the Solemn League and Covenant was to 
cease on the 25th of March, 1682. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



135 



It is evident, therefore, that all the Puritan objections 
to the Church as it existed before the wars remained in 
full force, and that it was determined to compel con- 
formity even to the minutest point in gesture, vestments, 
and ceremonies. 

The Book of Common Prayer remained without any 
alteration, except in a few very trifling matters, and these 
made it not in any degree more acceptable to the Puri- 
tans. 

The use of it was made imperative, and there was 
therefore an end to the exercise of free prayer in the 
public assemblies. 

No preaching of unordained persons was to be allow- 
ed, and no kind of ordination admitted as valid except 
that by bishops. 

Abjuration was required of an oath which had been 
taken by nearly all the ministers then in possession of 
the benefices ; and another oath was imposed involving 
the most complete surrender that could be made of the 
liberty of the subject into the hands of the crown. 
That ultimate right of resistance is rarely to be men- 
tioned, and even to be rarely thought upon ; but it can- 
not be formally given up without converting a consti- 
tutional monarchy into a despotism ; and so the nation 
at large seems to have thought, when in the next gene- 
ration they abolished this oath and substituted for it the 
oath of due allegiance. 

In all this there was much which made it extremely 
difficult for persons who had been educated in Puritan 
principles, and who had that nice and scrupulous con- 
science which a religious education usually produces, to 
comply with the terms of ministerial communion which 
were held out to them. To have accepted them, and so 
remained in the stations which they held in the Church, 
would have been to have renounced every principle for 
which they had been contending, and to sanction a system 
of national worship and ecclesiastical discipline which 
they in their consciences did not regard as sufficiently 



136 



THE LIFE OF 



scriptural, or as conducive of the interests of either 
sound morality or pure religion in the land. 

The requirement of re-ordination was one to which 
the younger ministers, such as Mr. Hey wood, could not 
bring themselves to submit without in effect declaring 
Presbyterian ordination invalid, and without, by submit- 
ting to the ordinance huice, approaching the confines of 
profaneness. They regarded it also as leading them in 
effect to condemn the ordination of the foreign Pro- 
testant Churches, which was almost universally prac- 
tised in the manner in which they had received it, and 
to put in question the validity of the ordinances admi- 
nistered by them, by which in those times many minds 
would have been greatly disturbed. This with respect 
to the Presbyterian ; the Independent could consent to 
receive no ordination from any minister at all ; and the 
Anabaptist agreed in this point in the main with the 
Independent, superadding the necessity of adult baptism. 

This point of re-ordination, it is manifest, struck also 
at the seat of honour, if considerations of that kind 
could have any place in deliberations concerning such 
high matter as this. It impugned the conduct of their 
reverend fathers in the ministry, proclaimed the solemn 
service an empty form, and brought, more forcibly than 
anything else, home upon their minds the thought from 
whence they had fallen. 

The Presbyterian ministers, or, to speak more gene- 
rally, the Puritan ministers, were thus placed in a posi- 
tion of great difficulty ; they must either condescend to 
renounce in a public and solemn manner all the peculiar 
opinions in which they had been educated ; declare, as to 
most of them, the ordination which they had received 
to be invalid, thinking it not only otherwise but emi- 
nently scriptural ; submit to an oath which struck at the 
very foundations of the liberties of their country ; and 
place themselves under a perpetual restraint in their 
public ministrations by reading, where before they had 
been accustomed to pour out their hearts in devout ex- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



137 



pression : — or they must abandon the stations in which 
they were placed, cease to minister to a people with 
whom their hearts were united, and throw themselves 
upon the world without a profession, and consequently, 
as to most of them, without the usual means of support. 
That so many of them chose the latter alternative, is a 
striking proof of the reality of their previous professions, 
and an animating instance of sacrifices voluntarily made 
out of regard to maintaining peace of conscience, and to 
the duty of submitting every opposing inclination to the 
claims of Christian sincerity. 

" Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject 

Those unconforming; whom one rigorous day 
Drives from their cures, a voluntary prey 

To poverty and grief and disrespect, 

And some to want — as if by tempest wreck 'd 
On a wild coast ; how destitute ! did they 
Feel not that conscience never can betray, 

That peace of mind is Virtue's sure effect. 

Their altars they forego, their homes they quit, 

Fields which they love, and paths they daily trod, 
And cast the future upon Providence : 
As men the dictate of whose inward sense 
Outweighs the world ; whom self-deceiving wit 

Lures not from what they deem the cause of God." 

Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sketches. 

The number of ministers who at this time refused to 
accept the terms of ministerial Conformity in the newly- 
restored church is loosely estimated at two thousand. 
Mr. Heywood says that they were two thousand five 
hundred, but in this number were included many who, 
though not conforming at first, did afterwards comply 
with the terms. The whole number of names in Dr. 
Calamy's list does not reach two thousand, and there are 
some of whom he could obtain no account, and whose title 
to the character of minister may be regarded as ques- 
tionable. In this honourable list are Mr. Heywood, 
his brother, Mr. Nathaniel Heywood, and his father-in- 
law, Mr. Angier. There are also the names of nearly 



138 



THE LIFE OF 



all his friends in the ministry, — Bentley, Jollie,Newcome, 
Tildesley, Goodwin, Park, Harrison. In the parish of 
Halifax, beside himself and Mr. Bentley, there were the 
two Roots, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Gamaliel Marsden. 
In the parts of Yorkshire with which he was most ac- 
quainted, the following ministers were Non-Conform- 
ists : — Mr. Kirby of Wakefield, Mr. Wood of Sandal, 
Mr. Hill of Crofton, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Jeremiah Mars- 
den of Ardsley, Mr. Christopher Marshall of Woodkirk, 
Mr. Richardson of Kirk Heton, Mr. Thorpe of Hopton, 
Mr. Swift of Peniston, Mr. Spawford of Silkston, Mr. 
Waterhouse of Bradford, Mr. Dawson of Thornton, Mr. 
Town of Howarth, Mr. Sharp of Addle, Mr. Crossley of 
Bramhope, Mr. Cotes of Rawden, Mr. Smallwood of 
Idle, Mr. Wales of Pudsey. At a greater distance, were 
the clergy of the towns of Leeds, Sheffield, and Rother- 
ham, with several at York # . 

* In speaking of these men I shall call them by the term by 
which they are usually designated, The Ejected Ministers, without 
distinguishing between those who gave way to the old incumbents 
and those who were in possession of benefices or cures from which 
no predecessor had been removed. By ' Ejected Ministers,' then, in 
the succeeding pages, I mean those ministers who had been engaged 
in the ministry before August 24, 1662, and who did not comply with 
the terms of ministerial communion prescribed by the Act. 

There is an admirable biographical account of most of them by Dr. 
Calamy : and as this work of Dr. Calamy's has been already several 
times referred to, and will be more frequently mentioned hereafter ; and 
as the nature of the work, which is one of the most valuable store- 
houses of original biography to be found in the modern literature of 
England, infinitely superior both in extent and novelty of informa- 
tion, in arrangement, and other literary merits, to the rival work, 
Walker's ' Sufferings of the Clergy' is not very generally under- 
stood ; — the following account of it may be acceptable: — When 
Baxter, one of the most celebrated of the Presbyterian divines, died, 
there was found among his papers a large manuscript containing 
' Memoirs of his Own Life and Times.' This manuscript was printed 
in 1696, by his friend Mr. Matthew Sylvester, in a folio volume, 
entitled ' Reliquice Baxteriance,' &c. It is an ill -digested work, and 
contains many things of little value, together with large papers va- 
luable in themselves, but easily, and perhaps advantageously, sepa- 
rated from the parts of the work properly historical. Among these 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



139 



The private reflections of Mr. Heywood on this occa- 
sion turn almost entirely on the injury which was done 
to the cause of religion by the removal of so many ex- 
cellent ministers from the stations which they filled ; 
and it cannot be doubted that there went out at this 
time from the Church of England the most assiduous 
and careful of its pastors, the most energetic and suc- 
cessful of its preachers ; that, in the eyes of all per- 
sons who look to the interests of religion and the 
maintenance of a high tone of piety and virtue, in the 

is that affecting memorial of the progress of Baxter's own mind in 
respect of the things in controversy in those times, which excited so 
strongly the admiration of Coleridge, and is indeed a noble piece of 
self-inspection. This and many other things were left out, and the 
rest of the work better digested, when it appeared, in 1702, in an 
octavo volume, entitled ' An Abridgement of Mr. Baxters History 
of his Life and Times.' This work was by Dr. Calamy, who was 
grandson of old Edmund Calamy, a celebrated London minister of 
the time of the Commonwealth. In 1713, a second edition of this 
work appeared, in two large octavo volumes. In this edition there 
is a continuation of the history to the year 1711; and a chapter in 
the former work, containing notices by Baxter of many other mi- 
nisters who took the same course that he did under the Act of Uni- 
formity in 1662, was expanded into a volume of 845 pages, containing 
the names of all the ministers who were sufferers on the return of 
Charles the Second, or by the politico-ecclesiastical measures adopted 
soon afterwards, with ample accounts of most of them. The first vo- 
lume of this work is entitled 1 An Abridgement of Mr. Baxter s History 
of his Life and Times,' and the second volume An Account of the Mini- 
sters , Lecturers , Masters and Fellows of Colleges and Schoolmasters, who 
were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration in 1660, by or before the 
Act of Uniformity ;' an honest title, which is of itself an answer to 
some modern cavils against his work. This is the work which is 
here quoted under the abbreviate of the title ' Account,' &c. It is by 
some writers referred to by the title of the First Volume, as Dr. 
Calamy's ' Abridgement,' &c. Fourteen years afterwards, namely, in 
1727, Dr. Calamy published, in two more octavo volumes of goodly 
size, with continuous paging, ' A Continuation of the Account of the 
Ministers,' &c, as before. This contains corrections and additions, 
with many new lives. This is the work quoted as Dr. Calamy's 
' Continuation,' &c. In 1775, Mr. Samuel Palmer, a dissenting mi- 
nister at Hackney, published a work in two volumes octavo, which 
he entitled ' The Non-Co?iformists' Memorial, originally written by 
Edmund Calamy, D.D., now abridged and corrected, and the Author s 



140 



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public arrangements which are made concerning eccle- 
siastical affairs, and not, or not principally, to the mere 
effect of them on the temporal or political condition, — 
there was much to be deplored in the loss of the ser- 
vices of these men, some of whose peculiarities might 
have been disregarded, or a frame of a church contrived 
such, as they might have felt no difficulty, or little diffi- 
culty, in conforming to it. Tt is remarkable how very 
little from this time we hear of the old Puritan scruples. 
The whole question appears to have assumed quite 
another character ; the comparative value of the services 
of the Ejected Ministers, and those of the Conforming 
Clergy, and the limits of the two conflicting principles, 
which, as we shall soon see, came immediately into play, — • 
the principle of private conscience of duty, and the prin- 
ciple of obedience to the national will. As time went 
on, other questions of greater moment arose. 

The sense of the injury done to the highest and dearest 
interests of his country, and, personally, of the opportuni- 
ties which he himself would lose of doing God service, was 
by far the most predominant sentiment in the mind of Mr. 
Heywood. The lower considerations seem to have been 
little thought of by him. But neither he, nor others who 
acted with him, could be wholly insensible to the value of 
the security which an honourable profession gives against 
the ordinary accidents of life, and to the immediate benefit 
which resulted on the exercise of the profession : and it 
was so ordained, that, at that particular juncture, as if to 
make more striking the example which they presented 
of superiority to worldly considerations, there were pri- 
vate reasons in the case of both the Mr. Heywoods to 
lead them to wish that there should be no diminution of 
their temporal resources. Mr. Hey wood's settled estate 
yielded him at this time a very small income, and he was 
burthened with a debt of thirty pounds, having also two 

additions inserted, with many further particulars and new anecdotes' 
Little can be said in praise of this work, and little more of the later 
editions in which it has appeared. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



141 



young children who looked to him for support. And it was 
also at this particular juncture that the fortunes of his 
father were wholly destroyed. Buoyed up by his former 
successes, this enterprising and scheming man had entered 
into new speculations which had wholly disappointed him. 
The ruin was total. He was cast into prison ; and his 
two other sons, who had been brought up to commerce, 
fled to foreign lands. One of them left a family in 
England. The elder Mr. Heywood had also, to add to 
their embarrassment, married a second wife, a young 
woman, who brought him a second family. It is re- 
markable, that this crisis in their affairs occurred in 
the very interval between the passing of the Act of Uni- 
formity and the time when assent must be signified to 
its terms ; for it was on Midsummer Day, 1662, that Mr. 
Heywood took his last leave of his eldest brother. 
" Oh, I remember his tears and agonies of spirit at my 
house at Norwood Green. He was entangled in my 
father's affairs ; withdrew 7 from his own house privately ; 
took a sad and sorrowful leave of his wife and children ; 
resolved to go beyond sea ; came to my house. I ac- 
accompanied him to Chapel of Frith, in Derbyshire. 
There we parted affectionately, June 24, 1662. At part- 
ing, we changed horses, and that horse I have kept almost 
fourteen years. He went to London, and so took 
shipping with Lord Willoughby, governor of the Planta- 
tions # . I suppose they went to Surinam or Barbadoes, 
and had their lot of many hundreds of acres." The 
younger brother, Josiah, accompanied him. They were 
scarcely heard of afterwards, and were supposed to have 
died before two years were over. 

It cannot therefore be doubted, that, when every allow- 
ance is made for any terrene matter, such as the spirit 
of party, the point of honour, the influence of example, 
respect for elders, and, perhaps, the lingering hope that 

* Francis the fifth lord and William the sixth lord, his brother, 
both went to the West Indies. Francis was drowned at Barbadoes 
in 1666, and William died in the same island in 1673. 



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a steady resistance might ultimately succeed in compelling 
the legislature to relax the severities of the Act, the con- 
duct of Mr. Heywood was an instance of heroic self- 
devotion, such as men have been honoured for of good 
men in every age, and such as we may humbly hope is 
acceptable in the sight of God. 

From this time, then, August 24, 1 662, Mr. Heywood 
ceased to be the public minister at Coley ; but he con- 
tinued to reside among his former flock. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



143 



CHAPTER VIII. 

the, ejected ministers resolve to continue in the exercise of 

their ministry. supported by many of the laity. mr. hey- 

wood's successors at coley. he is excommunicated. ef- 
fects. excommunicated in the diocese of chester also. 

preaches in his own and other private houses. conventicle 

at captain Hodgson's broken up. — his house searched. — 

other alarms. the farnley-wood plot. goes from home to 

preach in distant places. mr. swift's case at peniston. 

another excommunication, the parliament and the king 

concur in treating the non- conformists with severity. 

remarkable account of the singing of birds in the night 

while they are at worship. preaches at peniston, mottram, 

denton. mr. holland's purposed marriage sermon. the 

conventicle act. the twenty -fourth of august observed 

as a fast-day. question of non-conformists attending 

the churches. bramhope ; mr. dyneley. chapels founded 

in the commonwealth times.' visits london, lancashire, 

leeds. many arrests of non-conformists. case of posses- 
sion. various fasts. 

Two courses were open to the Presbyterian ministers, 
who, for the reasons already given, were obliged to 
retire from the stations which they had occupied in the 
Church ; — a quiet submission to the law, by which silence 
was imposed upon them, or to act in open opposition to 
the law and in defiance of it. And the eyes of the na- 
tion must have been turned upon them to observe the 
course which they took, as their determination was full 
of very important consequences both to the then present 
and to future generations. 

A very few betook themselves to secular employ- 
ments : three or four of them became physicians ; se- 



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veral became tutors in private families ; some established 
schools. But, by far the greatest number of them, among 
whom was Mr. Heywood, determined to maintain their 
right to be recognised in the character of minister with 
which they had been solemnly invested, and though pre- 
vented from exercising their ministry in the places in 
which they had been accustomed to do so, to seize any 
opportunities that might be presented to them of con- 
ducting religious services. 

Their case was very different from that of their fathers, 
the Puritan sufferers before the war, who had never 
thought of gathering communities from the Church, and 
thus setting up, as it were, an opposition to it. Their 
object had been to change the form of the Church, or to 
obtain greater liberty in it while it continued as it was, 
and they had lived in the not unreasonable hope and 
expectation of doing so. The Act of Uniformity must 
nearly have extinguished that hope in the minds of most 
of them, as it must have shown them that no kind of 
change was contemplated, and that an unreserved Con- 
formity would henceforth be insisted upon as rigidly as 
in the preceding times, and that those who did not con- 
form must cease to act as ministers. The language of 
the Act plainly was, — " Officiate in the Church and ac- 
cording to the forms of the Church, or cease to exercise 
the ministry at all." They were too many to think of emi- 
gration, — the course which their fathers had adopted 
when they were prohibited one by one from exercising 
their ministry at home ; if indeed they felt the horror of 
schism, or the danger of it, so strongly as to make it 
incumbent upon them to incur the inconveniences of 
transporting themselves to a distant country. But their 
horror of schism, which, as respects a church which is 
only national, not universal, is an offence hardly to be 
defined, and their reluctance to do any thing which was 
schismatical, would be abated by the example which had 
been set by the gathered churches of the Independents 
in the preceding times, and also of the Anabaptists and 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



145 



Quakers, by whom the ice had been broken : and they 
were sufficiently numerous to make their determination 
to defy the law in what they considered the discharge of 
their consciences, a matter not to be disregarded by 
those who had the direction of public affairs, and they 
had in point of fact very great influence in producing 
the great political change of 1688, though after years 
of struggle and adversity. 

It can scarcely have been that the framers of the Act 
of Uniformity did not contemplate that the effect would 
be exactly that which took place ; though, crushed as 
the Puritan party now were, it probably was not fore- 
seen that the house of Stuart would not ultimately stand 
its ground. If any amongst them, however, looked for 
a quiet submission, they must have been very ill-informed 
respecting the state of the Puritan mind ; and if they 
expected by a few severities to silence the voice of the 
Presbyterian ministry, they must have greatly misunder- 
stood the character of the men with whom they had to 
do, and the effects of an education which had given to 
their minds a strength above all the strength of temporal 
power. What can be done with men who " rejoice that 
they are counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of 
Jesus ?" It appears now to be but one of those superficial 
truths which no one can overlook, that it is the part of 
true policy, whatever it may be of Christian zeal, in the 
men who wield the power of the state to " forbear from 
such men, and let them alone," secure that " if the 
counsel and work be not of God it will come to nought, 
but if it be of God they cannot overthrow it ;" or, in 
other words, that there will arise variety of opinion in 
Protestant communities, and some of these opinions 
will be wild and irregular : but though this is an evil, it 
is the less evil when not animadverted upon, and may 
be tolerated as long as the temporal state sustains no 
direct injury. Still more is it the wisdom of temporal 
authorities to forbear, when there is nothing wild and 
extravagant, but perhaps some little excess of zeal for 

L 



146 



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that which is good, and when the aim is purely to keep 
up a healthful state of the public morals and the influ- 
ence of Christian truth in a Christian land ; and this 
was henceforth the principal object of the Presbyterian 
ministry. 

The notion of toleration was however at that time 
little understood in England by any party. The Lord 
Chancellor Hyde, in whose mind the public policy respect- 
ing the Non- Conformists for the most part originated, 
seems to have had not the most distant notion of it, but 
to have thought it possible to compel all persons to fol- 
low in one particular track. The principle of toleration 
grew up in the times which now follow, partly out of 
the treatment which the Non-Conformists received, but 
principally through the efforts of the then rising body of 
Latitudinarians, laymen and divines, for there were both, 
Conformists and Non-Conformists, who felt that an in- 
tolerant and circumscribing church places very serious 
obstacles in the way of men who look upon themselves 
as in the pursuit of divine truth, not as if they had al- 
ready attained it, a class which soon began to attract 
notice in England. 

As to Mr. Heywood, no man's mind was stronger in 
the strength of religious principle and in the hope and 
confidence of the Gospel. He was full of the recollection 
of the faith and patience of the saints, the labours and 
sufferings of the apostles, and of men in later times who 
had opposed themselves even to the death against the 
power of the oppressor, such as his own Marsh and 
Bradford, whose names had been " household words" 
in the common talk of the friends of his youth. He was 
not a man, loyal and submissive as he was in all tem- 
poral affairs, to yield to Acts of Parliament passed or to 
be passed which would silence the voice which had been 
so often raised to comfort the afflicted and to convince 
the guilty. Was he not an ordained and regularly ap- 
pointed minister of the Gospel, who had made a solemn 
vow in the midst of the great assembly and in the pre- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



147 



sence of his fathers in the ministry, some of whom were 
gone in the faith that they had committed the Word to 
to him, and was he not bound by it to continue stedfast 
in the ministry to the end of his life ? Had he not the 
apostolic words ever sounding in his ears, Vce mihi, si 
non prcedicavero ? And did not the growing profaneness 
and immorality of the time call for the counteraction 
which an uncompromising and faithful ministry pre- 
sented ? Could an Act of Parliament, or successive Acts 
of Parliament, avail to nullify his mission, or would it 
avail him in the day when the Lord should take account 
of his servants ? 

Such was the way in which he and other ministers 
reasoned when they determined to set up private con- 
science of duty against the national will, — a determina- 
tion rarely to be justified, but certainly not always to be 
condemned. It is a serious thing to oppose the law, 
because it is by the law that we are protected ; and it 
can hardly ever be vindicated (except in the cases in 
which the law has become effete and obsolete, though 
not formally changed), except in the case in which a 
person is seriously convinced that in no other way can 
he acquit himself in the higher duty which he owes to 
the great Sovereign and Lord of all. At the same time 
this is a fearful step, which the modest and humble 
Christian will ever dread to take ; because there is such 
a thing as an erroneous conscience, a mind heated by 
religious enthusiasm so as to be incapable of forming a 
clear notion of what is the line of duty ; and because of 
the numerous instances which have occurred in the his- 
tory of the Church of intolerable mischiefs having been 
committed at the prompting of individual judgment on 
what is right. It has been an error of the persons who 
spring from and represent the parties of whom we are 
speaking, to think too lightly of the respect which is due 
to the laws and institutions of the realm, begun at this 
period. The wisdom is, if it were attainable, for the 
legislature so to frame its measures that the private con- 

l 2 



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sciences of sensible, honourable, wise and religious men 
shall not be offended. 

The men who were silenced as public ministers by the 
Act of Uniformity were strengthened in the resolution 
which they took to continue to perform the duties of 
ministers, whatever might be the consequence, by ob- 
serving how great was the number of persons who ear- 
nestly desired it of them, and who were willing to sustain 
their share of the peril and inconvenience of the course. 
We may now, with our present knowledge and feeling, 
and with the improvement which has taken place in the 
taste of religious persons, think the discourses of these 
men which have come down to us uninstructive and un- 
improving, and gather from them, that their long prayers 
must have been as unedifying to instructed minds. But 
it was different in those days : when the voice of one of 
these zealous ministers was to be heard, hearers flocked 
" as doves to the windows" (one of their most favourite 
scripture-expressions), and this when there was "open 
vision ;" but how much more when they stole to some se- 
questered spot and there listened in privacy amid the 
darkness of the night, while the horses of those who 
waited to take them as their prey were heard around 
their places of assembly ! Nor had these men so lived 
in the world that they had not conciliated the kind 
affections of numerous private friends who would not 
forsake them in their adversity, but who clung to them 
the more closely when they saw them buffeted and evil- 
entreated by a world that was not worthy of them. 
There were also amongst the laity many who agreed with 
them in principle respecting the constitution of the 
Church, the imposition of the Liturgy, and the continu- 
ance of practices deemed superstitious ; who though not 
called upon by the Act, which required nothing of the 
laity, to take a prominent ground of opposition, yet 
felt themselves under an obligation to countenance those 
who were so. It was also often found that pastors were 
placed in the situations which the Puritan ministers had 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



149 



vacated, who were less pious, less energetic, less useful ; 
and this led to comparisons not favourable to the new 
order of things. A new question also arose out of it, 
which became afterwards one of great moment in the 
controversy between Dissenters and the Church, namely, 
in whom it was most fitting that the nomination of 
pastors should be vested ? 

It is a thing admitted, that there was a great difficulty 
at first in supplying the places from which the ministers 
had been removed with suitable successors to them; and, 
amongst others, the people of Coley were not fortunate 
in their selection of ministers to succeed Mr. Heywood. 
They had first a Mr. Fisden, of whom Mr. Heywood 
says, that " he was not liked, being a wild man." They 
had then a minister who called himself Mr. Pattison, 
though his name really was White. After a month's 
stay he took an abrupt departure, carrying with him 
property borrowed of his neighbours. They had then 
Mr. Hoole, one of the ministers who had been a Non- 
Conformist at first, but who had conformed after having 
been two years out of the Church. He came in October 
1664 and left Coley in 1669, being " not much regret- 
ted." They had then Mr. Moore and Mr. Ichabod Fur- 
ness, who gave the people little satisfaction and stayed 
but a short time ; and lastly, for the present, came 
Mr. Bramley, who left Coley under discreditable circum- 
stances. These six ministers fill up the first twelve years 
after they had lost their affectionate and able pastor. 

We left him under a suspension. He made no attempt 
to obtain the removal of it, knowing that the twenty- 
fourth day of August was at hand. But the Court at 
York was not content with suspending him from the 
exercise of his ministry ; they proceeded to excommuni- 
cation. I trace his papers in vain for the precise ground 
on which this sentence was pronounced, but it was pro- 
bably for further contempt. The sentence was published 
in the church of Halifax on the 2nd of November, 1662. 
How it was received by Mr. Heywood we may read in 



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his private memorials : — " Were it just, how formidable 
would the sentence be ! but ' The Curse causeless shall 
not come and Christ owned the poor ejected man with 
more free and familiar entertainment. 'Tis usual with 
God to communicate himself the most to those that are 
forsaken of their hopes and friends. Oh, that my God 
would now take me into more intimate communion 
with himself! " This was not a man to be subdued by 
severities. 

The effect of the sentence was to exclude him not 
from the pulpit only, but from the congregational as- 
sembly ; and of this he soon had an odious proof, for, 
going as a hearer to the chapel in which he had long 
been the minister, the churchwarden commanded him to 
avoid the place, as one lying under the sentence. He 
refused to obey, and it does not appear that force was 
resorted to. On another occasion, the chapel being 
without a minister, he had invited Mr. Lever, who had 
been ejected at the chapel in Ainsworth, to visit Coley 
and to preach there. Mr. Lever came. It was the 7th 
of December ; the weather was snowy and sharp ; 
yet great multitudes came. When ready to enter the 
chapel two of Mr. Heywood's old opponents stopped 
them, charging Mr. Lever to desist, or proceed at his 
peril. They informed him also that there was a troop of 
horse near at hand who would be called in to disperse 
the assembly. Upon this the people who had come to- 
gether separated, and the two ministers returned thought- 
fully home. 

On another occasion, at a somewhat later period, 
calling by accident at Shibden-hall, between Coley and 
Halifax, the family invited him to dine. It happened 
that Dr. Hooke, the new vicar, was to dine there on the 
same day. When he arrived he refused to sit down with 
Mr. Heywood, alleging that it was against the canons to 
eat with an excommunicated person. Mr. Heywood of 
course retired. 

Mr, Ellis, who was churchwarden at Coley, claimed 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



151 



from him the payment of four shillings for four days' 
absence from church, under the statute of Elizabeth. 
This appeared to him most unreasonable, as he was ex- 
cluded from the Church by his sentence of excommuni- 
cation. 

A poor pretext was taken to pronounce the like sen- 
tence of excommunication in the diocese of Chester, 
where the bishop, Hall, was determined to proceed in a 
strong manner against the Non-Conformists. The pre- 
text was, that he had preached a funeral sermon at 
Bolton when on a visit there. This was in November 
1662. There was little of the slow and sober gait of 
penal justice in these proceedings, for the citation was 
published in the church of Bolton on the 7th of Decem- 
ber, when he was at his house in another diocese, and 
the sentence of excommunication was pronounced on the 
4th of January following. 

These things show that Mr. Heywood had by this 
time attracted no small share of public attention, that 
he was regarded as a leading person among the Non- 
Conformists, and that it was thought his example would 
be likely to produce great mischief. 

These severe measures, instead of daunting him, or 
making his friends afraid, produced a reaction in his 
favour. " Satan is overshot in his own bow : that 
which was intended for my greatest ignominy is turned 
to my greatest glory, and hath set the people of God 
upon owning me and praying for me more than ever : 
yea, there hath been unwonted importunities for my 
poor company at several houses where very many came 
to hear the word of God, even in the night." Mr. An- 
gier, in the face of the Church's authority, admitted 
Mr. Heywood to the communion in the public chapel 
at Denton. There Mr. Angier still remained, though 
he had not conformed, sustained by the high reverence 
which every one felt for his character, his age, and the 
countenance given him by the chief gentlemen of the 
place. Mr. Heywood speaks of the great comfort which 



152 



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he found in this act of his father-in-law. But Mr. An - 
gier, always a man of peace, advised him to apply to the 
Court at York to have the sentence removed. Mr. Hey- 
wood took some steps for this purpose. But when he 
learned from the Chancellor that this could not he done 
unless he took the oath de parendo juri et stando man- 
datis Ecclesice, he refused to proceed with his supplica- 
tion. 

He went on in the course which he had thought it 
his duty to take without any particular molestation from 
the magistracy. It was known that he preached in pri- 
vate houses, and also that persons resorted to his own 
house to be present at religious services ; but no notice 
was taken of it, or at least very little, and the first storm 
fell upon the house of his Independent neighbour, Cap- 
tain Hodgson, who gives the following account of it : — 
"My next trouble came upon me in the beginning of 
July [June] 1663. I had occasion to be at Leeds, and 
coming home at night, I found Mr. Jollie, a good man, 
was come to my house out of Lancashire on purpose to 
visit me and my family, and, as his custom was and had 
been many years, to instruct us. My wife had sent for 
many neighbours to come in ; and the Act of Conformity 
having taken place, he was performing family duty, being 
tender of his own liberty as well as ours. He craved a 
blessing upon the ordinance, and spoke something from 
a scripture. But I desired to put an end to the duty, in 
regard there was danger towards us. our neighbours that 
belonged to Sir John's troop # being mounted with a 

* Sir John Armitage, who resided at Kirklees, which had been a 
house of Professed Ladies, suppressed at the Reformation, an interest- 
ing place on the borders of the parish of Halifax. He was through 
life an active enemy of the Non- Conformists in his character of ma- 
gistrate, and as having command of the trained bands, or militia, the 
troopers named in the text. Lady Armitage was a daughter of 
Thornhill, of Fixby, in the parish of Halifax. She brought him 
eight sons, none of whom left issue to inherit his title of baronet. 
On their death the estate went to a distant relation, in whom the 
title was revived in 1738. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



153 



design to set the house about. But one of their wives 
sent us word to look to ourselves ; and so we dismissed 
the company out at the back-door into the fields, the 
minister and all, and shut up the gates and doors of the 
house ; and presently we were set about with horsemen. 
In the morning I caused the hall-door to be opened, 
after a parley, and suffered three persons to come in, 
Abraham Mitchell, the leader of the party, Samuel Fox- 
croft, and John Hanson, who came in with his sword 
drawn, but I caused him to put it up ; and so I showed 
them my children and family in bed ; and so they with- 
drew, and searched neighbours' houses, and no prey : — 
so wonderfully did God hide us from the fury of these 
men*/' 

This was the meeting to which the following passage 
in Mr. Heywood's papers refers : — " On June 10, 1663, 
there was a great meeting at Coley-hall where Mr. Jollie 
was to preach ; but, as it pleased God, I was in Lanca- 
shire. The soldiers had intelligence, and came to ap- 
prehend them, but were disappointed, the persons met 
having notice of the design. Which night they came to 
my house to search, but found not their prey ; yet since 
they have got information concerning several persons, 
and have bound them to sessions and to good behaviour. 
Divers have escaped them whom they are now seeking ; 
others they are sending to prison upon other accounts ; 
yet hitherto I have lived quietly at home, though they 
often watch my house to get a clear advantage against 
me ; and though they know of some solemn meetings I 
have been at to preach the word, yet hitherto the Lord 
hath restrained them." 

* Original Memoirs during the great Civil War, p. 181. This was 
not the first effect which Captain Hodgson found from the change 
of the times. Very soon after the Restoration he was committed to 
the castle of York for treasonable words by two neighbouring jus- 
tices, Sir John Kaye, of Woodsome, and Sir John Armitage. He 
was acquitted on his trial. He was in trouble again for pretended 
plotting, when his arms were taken from him, and he was in other 
respects harassed. He was decidedly a Republican and Independent. 



154 



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Again, " On Wednesday, August 12, 1663, towards 
night came to me three several messengers to bring me 
word that the troopers would come that night to appre- 
hend me, and desired me to withdraw out of the way. 
I told them I had not broken either God's law or man's 
law, so as to deserve any punishment from them ; there- 
fore I resolved to stay, hoping that my integrity would 
preserve me, and my known loyalty to God and the king 
would be my best apology against the imputations of 
men about my plotting, which is the common pretence 
to secure men ; but my escaping would seem to plead 
guilty. Accordingly I stayed and slept as sweetly as 
ever I did in all my life, without the least molestation. 
And many other times have I had the like merciful pro- 
tection and prevention after such like alarms : so that 
though I was the first person that was meddled with in 
these parts, yet hitherto God hath been a defence upon 
my habitation so as my body and goods are preserved, 
and I may set up the stone Ebenezer, Hitherto the Lord 
hath helped, to admiration ! " 

The autumn of that year was a time of great alarm in 
the parts of Yorkshire in which Mr. Heywood resided, 
and if we could suppose that the whole was not well 
known to the Government from the beginning, not 
wholly without reason. A small body of simple, ignorant, 
and deluded people who lived about Morley and Gilder- 
some, who belonged to the class of the extreme Puritan, 
being Republicans and Independents, rose in arms in 
the October of this year, declaring for a Christian ma- 
gistracy and a Gospel ministry. They proceeded so far 
as to throw up entrenchments in Farnley-wood, in the 
neighbourhood of Leeds. The plot had ramifications in 
other parts of the kingdom ; and among the persons 
who were seduced to join in it was Ralph Rymer, of the 
neighbourhood of Northallerton, w T ho had been a se- 
questrator in the late times (father of Thomas Rymer, the 
collector of the Fcedera), who was taken and executed. 
Colonel Hutchinson's name is mentioned in connexion 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



155 



with it, and the name also of General Lambert, who was 
to take the entire command. Mr. Hey wood says that 
he was personally acquainted with many of the people 
of his neighbourhood who were concerned, twenty-one 
of whom were executed. He intimates that they were 
simple-minded men, lured on to destruction ; and he 

speaks of Major (whose name I suppress out of 

respect to those who are now his representatives), as 
" that perfidious wretch, guilty of so much blood in the 
plot- business. 3 ' The principal person who appeared at 
Farnley-wood was Captain Thomas Oates, of Morley, 
who was one of those executed. When his son was 
prepared to give evidence against him, the judge refused 
to hear him. How sad that political necessities can ever 
be supposed to call for scenes such as those # ! 

The name of Mr. Heywood is not mentioned in the de- 
positions to which I have alluded below. Indeed nothing 
could have been more directly opposed to his principles 
and repugnant to his feelings than to have had the least 
share in a political movement like this. It was his 
principle through life to keep himself as much as pos- 

* Beside thus appearing in so shocking a position, he gave very- 
extended information to the magistrates. His long, rambling, and 
unintelligible depositions are printed by Dr. Whitaker in his work 
entitled Loidis and Elmete, p. 108-1 13. I do not blame Dr. Whita- 
ker for having published them, but I could wish that he had not 
given his own credence and authority to such incredible statements, 
and charged on respectable men, not so much the wickedness as the 
folly of implicating themselves in anything so ridiculous ; and I wish 
that he had given some intimation that this, like the plot of the same 
period called Yarrington's, has every appearance of having been arti- 
ficial, — a contrivance of government itself. Artificial plots formed part 
of Hyde's policy ; if ever to be justified at all, only on the ground 
of very extreme necessity. Dr. Whitaker might also have pro- 
nounced a stronger opinion on the conduct of the unhappy person 
whose depositions they are, — Ralph Oates, Master of Arts ; con- 
cerning whom I find in Mr. Heywood' s papers, that he entered the 
church as a Conformist minister, had the living of Smeaton, near 
Wentbridge ; sold an estate of 80/. per annum ; got into much debt, 
and became a private soldier. 



156 



THE LIFE OF 



sible apart from political affairs, his whole heart and 
mind being absorbed with attention to the duties of his 
ministerial office. Nor was the object at which these 
people aimed one in which he felt any particular inter- 
est ; for though feeling the evils of his position, he had 
felt the evils also of sectarian rule. What he wanted 
was firmly established kingly government, and a church 
wisely and liberally constructed, so as best to answer the 
ends of its institution. 

About this time the entries in his auto-biographical 
remains become more particular, and he put down, not 
day by day, as afterwards he did, but, very frequently, 
notes of incidents as they occurred ; so that we have 
more of facts, and less of reflection upon them, than 
before. Thus, he gives an account of one of his first 
Sunday rambles in search of an opportunity to preach, 
which he had not found at home. He was through life 
an early riser, and this day, at the end of September, he 
set out with the intention of going to Peniston, a small 
country town about twenty miles south of Coley, where 
Mr. Swift still continued to officiate in the church with- 
out having conformed, the principal families in the pa- 
rish, the Bosviles, Wordsworths, and Riches, being Pu- 
ritans and supporters of him # ; but missing his way, he 
turned to Honley, where another Non-Conforming mi- 

* Mr. Swift's case was very peculiar. He continued to hold the 
church till his death, many years after, though he had never sub- 
scribed, nor used the Common Prayer; but he was several times 
imprisoned for offences of Non-Conformity. The doubt respecting 
the right of presentation, which occasioned a lapse after Mr. Swift's 
death, probably favoured this irregularity. We shall find Mr. Hey- 
wood several times afterwards at Peniston, preaching in the church ; 
and he remarks that this freedom of Mr. Swift was the more worthy 
observation, because the church of Peniston had been made a garri- 
son in the time of the war by Sir Francis Wortley, whose seat is at 
no great distance, " who from hence roved up and down the country, 
robbing and taxing many honest people ; but now the good people 
from all parts flock thither, and there are sweetly refreshed with 
the bread of life in public when a spiritual famine is through the 
land." 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



157 



nister, Mr. Dury, was still in possession of the public 
chapel. Mr. Dury was absent that day, and no oppor- 
tunity of preaching being presented, Mr. Heywood pro- 
ceeded to the chapel in Holmfirth, in a very romantic 
country, where he arrived about noon. The morning 
service was over, but the preacher and several of the 
people besought him that he would conduct the service 
in the afternoon, which he did. On another Sunday, 
October 1 1 , he preached the whole day in another ob- 
scure place, Shaw-chapel, in the parish of Prestwich in 
Lancashire, having been expressly invited to do so, " a 
great number of good people being gathered from a 
distance." He did this at a great hazard, and notices 
as a mercy that he had not been troubled on account of 
it, as other Non-Conformist ministers had been who had 
preached at the same chapel. He had great encourage- 
ment in the apparent effects at this beginning of his 
irregular ministrations. It was natural that it should 
be so. 

On the 6th of December another sentence of excom- 
munication against him was published in the church of 
Halifax. He does not inform us whether this was a 
more severe sentence than the one under which he al- 
ready lay, or what circumstances rendered a repetition 
of the sentence necessary ; but " he desires to make 
some spiritual use of it, and get so much nearer to God, 
as men cast him out from them." He continued to act 
also in open defiance of it ; for on the 20th of the month 
he went to the chapel at Coley, where on that day Mr. 
Moor, of Baildon, a reputed Antinomian, was to preach. 
The churchwarden came in fury, before the minister had 
begun his sermon,, insisting that Mr. Heywood should 
withdraw, and calling on the minister not to preach to 
an excommunicated person. He refused to retire, and 
Mr. Moor proceeded with his discourse. But when he 
returned home, Mr. Heywood was not satisfied with 
what he had done, and forbore to attend the chapel in 
the afternoon. He spent it in private religious medita- 



158 



THE LIFE OF 



tion, which appears to have been more than usually in- 
tense. 

Everything which happened at this period of his life 
appears to have been turned by him into marks of God's 
approval of the course which he had taken. An unex- 
pected present of five pounds at Christmas, at a time 
when he wanted the means of discharging the rent of 
his house, is particularly noticed by him as a proof 
sc that God cared for him." He took encouragement 
from it, and wrote in his diary, " The Lord is my shep- 
herd ; I shall not want," and " Hitherto God hath 
helped." 

The year 1664 opened upon him with no prospect of 
any improvement in his position, for the question be- 
tween the king and the Parliament respecting the policy 
to be pursued towards persons not conforming to the 
Church was composed, and both were agreed in taking 
severe measures for the better protection of the Church. 
The sentence of excommunication was still in force ; and 
a vain attempt was made to have it removed. Tt was 
even intended that he should be arrested under it, and 
principally on that account he left his home and re- 
mained for a month among his friends in Lancashire 
On his return he had ten weeks of quiet, having frequent 
religious assemblies in his house, when the services ap- 
pear to have been exquisitely delightful. " Yesternight," 
says he, " above all the rest, is a night much to be ob- 
served, and deserves an asterism of memorial, being the 
evening of March 28, 1664. When we had appointed 
a meeting, notice was brought that some persons had 
promised N. W. # to find out and acquaint him with 
our meeting, that he might catch us together : upon 
which, some that were wont to come absented them- 
selves, though several others at a distance came that 
formerly have not been with us ; and God watched over 
us, and kept us in safety. Yea, more than that, all the 

* Nathan Whitley, of Rooks, a very determined adversary of Mr. 
Heywood. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



159 



while they were together, namely, from 8 o'clock till 1 1 , 
there was a most sweet, pleasant, melodious singing of 
birds about the house, as delightfully as ever I heard in 
all my life, and I was much taken with the music. All 
the company heard it, and wondered at it ; and all said 
it was more than ever they heard before for birds to sing 
so sweetly in the night, and at this season. Immediately 
after all the company was gone away, I went out, but 
could not hear so much as a chirping, or any noise of a 
bird at all. I humbly and believingly take this as a 
token for good, and a sign that our ' summer is near/ 
and ' the time of the singing of birds is not far off.' — 
Cant. ii. 12. And it may be an evidence of God's pro- 
tecting providence, according to that in Isaiah xxxi. 5. 
4 As birds flying, so will the Lord of Hosts defend Jeru- 
salem ; ' or of an exemption from the ' causeless curse ' 
of a malicious and malignant excommunication, Pro v. 
xxvi. 2." In this way he moralises on all occurrences 
which have in them anything remarkable. It was pro- 
bably a family of nightingales ; yet the nightingale is 
very rarely heard in the groves of Halifax, and it was 
unusually early in the year, even when we remember 
that the change of the style makes the 28th of March 
answer to the 7 th or 8th of April. 

Early in May his adversaries obtained the writ de ex- 
communicato capiendo against him, but it was no further 
put in force than to obtain an engagement from him to 
be forthcoming whenever the sheriff called for him. He 
speaks of the civility with which the bailiff used him, 
and attributes the leniency with which he was treated to 
the interference of Dr. Maud, a physician then practising 
at Halifax. 

No new condition, however, at all altered his resolu- 
tion to continue in the exercise of his ministry. " Yes- 
terday morning, May 8, I was called out of my bed 
before sun-rise by a considerable number of persons 
who came to hear the word of God : and there came 
another company in the forenoon, and still more in the 



160 



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afternoon, and we enjoyed all the day in peace, freedom 
from disturbance, and abundant spiritual enlargement. 
It was a sweet day to my spirit, though painful to my 
body ; but having so fair a call, and full an auditory, I 
laid out myself, not knowing but it may be a parting 
exercise ; and I find that ' when Paul was ready to de- 
part, he continued his speech till midnight'." 

On the next Sunday, May 15, he went again to Pe- 
niston. He arrived early in the morning, and Mr. Swift 
prevailed upon him to conduct the service of the day in 
the church (so bold was he) ; and Mr. Heywood accord- 
ingly officiated both in the morning and evening service. 
There was a great assembly • and when the service was 
over, a gentleman of the parish sent to Mr. Heywood a 
message, offering him an asylum at his house, where he 
believed he might find security, understanding that he 
was in some trouble. " I thanked him, but resolved to 
return to my family and commit myself to the Lord, 
who I hope will still watch over me, as hitherto he hath 
wonderfully done." 

On the 5th of June he went, by invitation from the 
churchwarden, to preach at the church of Mottram in 
Longdendale, in Cheshire, and this with the consent of 
the vicar, though a Conformist. The vicar himself was 
present at both the services, and was very desirous to 
have Mr. Heywood come again. Two days after he was 
at Denton, at the house of Mr. Angier, where a private 
fast was kept. There was a considerable number of 
persons assembled. He began the service. " I con- 
tinued about three hours pouring out my soul before the 
Lord, principally on behalf of his Church." Another 
private fast, at which he was present, was kept, appa- 
rently nearly at the same time, at Denton Hall, the seat 
of Colonel Holland # . 

* Colonel Holland, the Richard Holland, Esq., before mentioned, 
had been a considerable person in the Civil Wars, and was a great 
friend of Mr. Angier. He died about this time. His estate of 800/. 
a-year passed to his brother, a bachelor of sixty years of age. Mr. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



161 



In the summer of this year the king gave his assent 
to a bill tendered him by Parliament, which was framed 
to put an end to any uncertainty on the state of the 
law in respect of persons holding or frequenting con- 
venticles. The preamble sets forth, that doubts had 
arisen whether the statute of the thirty-fifth of Eliza- 
beth was still in force, declaring however these doubts 
unreasonable ; but, to put an end to the uncertainty, 
it is now enacted, that every person present at any 
religious meeting where there are five persons or more 
above the household, on information before a jus- 
tice of the peace, shall be committed to gaol for any 
time not exceeding three months, or pay a fine not ex- 
ceeding five pounds ; for the second offence six months' 
imprisonment, or fine of ten pounds ; and for a third 
offence, on conviction by a jury, be transported to any 
of His Majesty's foreign plantations, except Virginia 
and New England, for seven years, or pay a fine of one 
hundred pounds. Lieutenants, deputy-lieutenants, or 
any commissioned officers of militia, sheriffs, justices of 
the peace and other officers, are required to repair to the 
places where such conventicles are supposed to be held 
and to dissolve them, and power is given to the justices 
of the peace to enter houses to search, using force if ne- 
cessary. A most oppressive and unchristian Act ; one 
of a series of such measures, when the determination was 
taken to suffer no religious service in England but that 
which was according to the manner of the Church from 
which so many ministers had withdrawn themselves. 
All the effect of the Act, however, was only to produce 
more of caution in the private assemblies which were 

Heywood relates this singular story of him : — that, intending to 
marry, "he found out a suitable gentlewoman, one Mrs. Britland : 
the marriage-day was appointed ; all things settled and concluded. 
In the meantime he fell sick and died, and was buried upon the day 
that was prefixed for marriage solemnities. The minister preached 
upon the same text at the funeral that was appointed for the nup- 
tials, Matthew xxv. 6, only changing the words ' There was a cry 
made,' for 'Behold the bridegroom cometh.' " 

M 



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held. On the determination of the ministers it produced 
no change, nor, on their principles, ought it. 

Mr. Heywood had at this period service every Sunday 
in his own house, and he notices that he had always 
more than twice the number of strangers allowed by the 
Act. His manner of conducting the service did not 
much differ from that which had formerly been his prac- 
tice when the public minister, except that the devotional 
part occupied a larger portion of the time, an hour in 
the forenoon being spent in confession and petition, and 
an hour in the afternoon " in the great and sweet duty 
of thanksgiving." 

The 24th of August was observed at the house of 
a neighbouring minister as a solemn fast. " The Lord 
helped his servants with strong cries, many tears, and 
mighty workings to acknowledge sin, accept of punish- 
ment, and implore mercy, after two years' death upon 
the ministry. Sure I am God bottles all these tears ; 
these prayers shall not be lost. From this time forth 
I will hearken what God will speak ; he will speak peace 
to his saints, for when he prepares his people's hearts 
to pray he will bow his ear to hear. This day's sowing 
is a sweet earnest of future harvest." 

In September we find him preaching again in the 
public churches of Peniston and Mottram, and visiting 
Denton. In October, continuing his usual services in his 
own house, he finds that he is watched, and he re- 
ceives information of Sir John Armitage's intention to 
surprise them at one of their meetings, and put the pro- 
visions of the Conventicle Act in force against them ; 
but nothing was done. 

At this period a very material question was agitated 
in the body of Non-Conformists, who had by this time 
acquired something of consolidation and distinctness, 
namely, whether it were lawful, and if lawful,, expedient, 
that those who attended the services of the ministers 
who had retired from the church should also attend the 
public service in the parish churches. The importance of 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



163 



this question will be at once perceived. " Some," says 
Calamy # , ' 'were vehement for an entire separation." But 
Mr. Baxter and Dr. Bates, with others, were for having the 
Non-Conformist laity to frequent the public churches at 
times when none of their own ministers were to be heard, 
and to resort to them occasionally even when they had 
their choice, to show their charity and catholic spirit. 
And with this latter opinion Mr. Hey wood's judgment 
coincided, and he encouraged those who came to his 
private services to attend also the ministry at the public 
chapel, of Mr. Hoole, then lately settled there, whom he 
looked upon to be a good and pious man. To promote 
this object he even forbore to have such frequent services 
at his own house on the Sundays ; and as to himself, he 
was so disposed to attend the public service, that he 
obtained such an opinion as he could from the inter- 
preters of ecclesiastical law on the question, whether an 
excommunicate might not lawfully attend the preaching 
of the word, not joining in the prayers. The answer 
which Dr. Hitch gave was ambiguous ; from which Mr. 
Heywood drew the conclusion that there was nothing 
very determinate in ecclesiastical law. He was fre- 
quently present at Mr. Hoole's services. 

In the November of this year appears to have begun 
his acquaintance with the Dyneleys of Bramhope in 
Wharf-dale, the head of which family, Mr. Robert Dyne- 
ley, was an ancient Yorkshire esquire, a grandson of 
Sir Robert Stapleton, who, in the days of Queen Eliza- 
beth, had been accounted, according to Sir John 
Harington, " the finest gentleman of England next 
to Sir Philip Sidney," and married to a daughter 
of Sir John Stanhope. He was a person of great 
religious zeal, one proof of which was the founda- 
tion of a chapel at Bramhope, in the Commonwealth 
times, in which was placed a Puritan minister, Mr. 
Crossley, who continued his services there without ha- 



* Abridgement, &c, p. 310. 
M 2 



164 



THE LIFE OF 



ving conformed, under the protection which Mr. Dyneley 
afforded him, though neither the minister nor the patron 
were allowed to proceed in this course without legal 
animadversion # . On the 6th of November Mr. Hey- 
wood went to hear Mr. Crossley, and in the afternoon 
was pressed by Mr. Dyneley to conduct the service, 
which he did. " I had unwonted liberty of speech and 
spirit both in prayer and preaching, and God affected 
the hearts of his people. Blessed be God ! such a season 
is worth a prison. Let me obey God's will and do his 

* The foundation of the chapel of Bramhope took place in 1649, 
when there was no Church of England, in the ordinary sense of 
the term. The freeholders united in the work with Mr. Dyneley, 
the lord of the manor, particularly Mr. Robert Todd, the Puritan 
and Non- Conforming minister in one of the churches of Leeds. It 
is one of the earliest instances of a foundation for religious purposes 
resting on a private trust-deed. The lord and the freeholders sur- 
rendered on this occasion 130 acres of the waste grounds of the 
manor to Sir George Wentworth and other persons, for the use of a 
chapel to be erected and the maintenance of an able and godly mini- 
ster ; ten acres to be appropriated for a messuage for the minister's 
residence, and forty pounds a~year, to be raised from the rest, for his 
stipend : full power is given to Mr r Dyneley, together with the trus- 
tees, and with the assent of Mr. Todd and " four of the most honest, 
godly and conscientious inhabitants of the chapelry" of their nomi- 
nation, to appoint the minister : if they neglect to do so within three 
months, the ministers of Leeds, Addle, Guiseley and Otley, with 
the assistance of any three or four of the said feoffees and of four of 
the honest and godly inhabitants, are to nominate : power to suspend 
and deprive the minister is reserved to Mr. Dyneley and the feoffees, 
with the approbation of the four ministers. See Loidis and Elmete, 
p. 197. This shows what appeared to a body of Puritans of those 
times the most judicious means of settling that very difficult point 
in ecclesiastics, the mode of appointing a minister to a cure. 

Foundations of this kind and this age are rare. There were four 
others in the diocese of York, and probably more : Ellenthorpe, Great 
Houghton, Stannington, and Morley. After a generation or two the 
Dyneleys conformed, and the Bramhope chapel became united to the 
Church. The other four have continued in the hands of the Non- 
Conforming descendants of their founders, by whom they could not 
be intended for the service of the Book of Common Prayer, or for a 
minister who could comply with the terms of the Act of Uniformity. 
I have heard, I know not how truly, that the chapel at Great 
Houghton has recently been united with the Church. 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



165 



will, and let his will be done upon me 1" He soon paid 
another Sunday visit to Bramhope, where he heard 
Mr. Ord, a north-country minister, who was lately in 
prison at York for preaching in a public church in that 
city. He remained there on the Monday, which was the 
30th of January, a public fast, when a great congregation 
assembled from all parts, and we find Mr. Crossley and 
Mr. Heywood both engaged in conducting the service ; 
Mr. Crossley began, and Mr. Heywood took it up at 
eleven o'clock, " continuing," he says, " with abundant 
enlargement till half-past three." 

In the course of this year, 1665, Mr, Heywood spent 
six weeks in a journey to the south, visiting Cambridge, 
Dedham in Essex, where he had many relations on the 
part of the Angiers, London, Coventry, and returning 
by Lancashire. The 12th of July was kept as a day of 
thankfulness for his safe return. We have no particulars 
of what occurred in this journey, though he says that 
there were things that were worth a particular recital. 
During his absence his house was searched by Sir John 
Armitage, on suspicion of a conventicle. 

Such suspicions were by no means unreasonable, for 
Mr. Heywood, whether at home or abroad, paid no re- 
gard to the state of the law in this respect, scarcely even 
a prudential regard ; conscientious regard, certainly none. 
On one of several visits to the neighbourhood of Bolton 
in the course of this year, the rector of Radcliffe, Mr. 
Beswick, sought to have the law enforced against him 
for collecting unlawful assemblies, but failed, chiefly 
through the moderation of Mr. Hulton of the Park. 
The 2nd of August, one of the public fast days on ac- 
count of the plague, was observed by him at his father's 
house with more than common solemnity. His bro- 
ther, Mr. Nathaniel Heywood, and Mr. Jones of Eccles, 
another Non-Conforming minister, were there. The 
service began at ten and was continued till six in the 
evening. 

On the 13th he preached in the public chapel at 



166 



THE LIFE OF 



Shadwell, not far from Leeds. This seems to have been 
the boldest act in his illegal career ; for Mr. Hardcastle'*, 
who had been the minister before the Act, was at that 
time in prison for continuing to preach. The place was 
also under the particular notice of the magistracy of 
Leeds, who were intent on suppressing conventicles ; 
and had not their attention been drawn away by a meet- 
ing of Quakers held on the same day, many of whom 
were taken and committed to prison, it was supposed 
that they would have sent their officers to Shadwell. On 
the Monday Mr. Heywood proceeded to Leeds, where 
were many persons to whom his visit was welcome. 
There was a large private assembly to whom he preached. 
This has too much the appearance of courting danger 
and inviting persecution ; especially as at that particular 
time there was a strong simultaneous action among the 
magistracy to put the law in force against the Non- Con- 
formists. On the 19th of the month, Dr. Maud, Captain 
Hodgson, the younger of the two Roots, Nathaniel Shrig- 
ley and John Lumme were arrested in the parish of Hali- 
fax, and it was expected that he would be arrested too. 
This was on a rumour of a plot ; and it was repre- 
sented, says Captain Hodgson, as having originated with 
the Duke of York, who was then corning to York with 
his duchess. The like arrests took place in other parts of 
the country. The persons arrested were taken to York, 
where, says Captain Hodgson, there were at least four- 
score prisoners, among whom were parliament-men, 
colonels, majors, lieutenant-colonels and captains. They 
were kept in prison for a considerable time, but at length 
released without trial. 

The 24th of August was again kept by him as a fast- 
day, but privately, with a few of his neighbours only. He 
" lamented the sad judgment before the Lord, inquired 
the cause and the sin which had provoked it, begged 

* It may be added to Dr. Calamy's account of Mr. Hardcastle, 
that he married a daughter of Lieutenant general Gerard, who was 
an Anabaptist, as Mr. Hardcastle also was. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



167 



the sanctified use of so dreadful a stroke, and besought 
God to remove it." 

On the 17th of September, when he was observing 
the Sunday at home, Joshua Whitley the constable, 
brother to Nathan Whitley, came with a warrant of 
search to Mr. Heywood's house ; but on this occasion 
the whole number of strangers was only four. 

On the 1 1th of October he joined with Mr. Wales of 
Pudsey in a fast at Wakefield, on behalf of a person who 
was supposed to be possessed or bewitched. The erro- 
neous opinion respecting the origin of such complaints 
as that under which the young man laboured, lingered 
longer perhaps among the Puritans than in other classes 
of the community ; as did also notions of the possibility 
of injury being actually done by the poor unfortunate and 
ignorant persons who conceived of themselves that they 
possessed some strange occult power of doing so. But the 
most reflective men of the times had not yet risen superior 
to these erroneous notions, for who was more so than Sir 
Thomas Browne ? I give in the note some particulars 
of this case # . Mr. Hey wood remained at Wakefield se- 

* The name of the party was Nathan Dodgson, and his case is thus 
described by Mr. Heywood : — " He was strangely taken, especially 
at prayer ; six or seven lusty men could scarcely hold him, but he was 
lift up off the bed with incredible violence. He had abundance of 
fits that day ; had all his senses taken from him ; was as stiff as a 
stone ; did sing in his fits. The Lord helped his servants to pray 
feelingly with compassionate hearts, and God heard prayer, for from 
Wednesday till Monday that I came away, he had no such violent 
fits, only when we went to prayer he was ordinarily cast into a kind 
of slumber and was not sensible. He often sees an apparition like 
a woman, and those that are with him hear a terrible noise, but see 
nothing." 

The singing while the body was in a state of rigidity and the 
apparition which Dodgson saw show plainly the kind of witchcraft 
under which he lay, and bring the case very closely to that which 
is described in a singularly interesting manner by Dr. John Jebb 
(Works, 1787, ii. 44). He calls the disease catalepsy. The disease 
is of rare occurrence, and females appear to be more particularly 
subject to it. Dr. Jebb's patient was a lady. The case of Mrs. 
Martha Hatfield of Laughton, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, of 



168 



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veral days, one of which was a Sunday, when he preached 
at Flanshaw-hall in the neighbourhood, a place in which 
the voice of the Puritan minister of those times was 
often to be heard. Mr. Kirby, who had been the Lady 
Cambden lecturer, continued to live in the town, and 
had erected a pulpit in a large room of his house for the 
more convenient performance of Non-Conformist ser- 
vices. Mr. Hey wood preached in it in the evening, and 
had a large assembly. 

On the 17th (these details cannot be omitted, as it is my 
design to show as much as possible of the mode of life of 
the earlier of the Non-Conforming ministers in England) 
he kept a fast at the house of Mr. Joseph Dawson, a 
young minister who had been ejected from Thornton 
chapel^ in the neighbouring parish of Bradford, and had 
come to reside in the near neighbourhoodof Mr. Hey wood. 
He was a native of Morley, the son of Abraham Dawson 
of that place, who was one of the persons implicated by 
Ralph Oates in the Farnley-wood insurrection, when that 
reckless man dealt around him destruction and death 
with an unsparing hand*. There was a close intimacy 

which an account was published in several editions, was of the same 
land; only religion having a stronger hold on the young woman's 
mind, who was but twelve years of age, than a softer passion, instead 
of singing plaintive airs, she talked with extreme volubility, in the 
phrase of the Puritan preachers who resorted to her father's house. 
The case of Elizabeth Barton, the maid of Kent, in the reign of 
Henry the Eighth, was of the same kind, according to the descrip- 
tion given of it in the statute of her attainder. When in her trances, 
she mingled with her pious exhortations opinions on the king's 
divorce. This was construed into high treason, and she was executed. 

There happened to be at that time at Wakefield one of those unfor- 
tunate persons who lay under the suspicion of being adepts in the 
arts of witchcraft, and who perhaps thought that they might be able 
to gratify malignant feelings by the use of such arts. Suspicion im- 
mediately fell upon this woman as having bewitched Dodgson. Some 
persons, indignant at the act, or thinking possibly that thus Dodgson 
might be relieved, caused her death. A jury found what they did 
murder, and three persons were convicted and executed ; so that 
four lives were sacrificed through an ignorant apprehension of the 
nature of the disease. 

* Yet Mr. Dawson lived out all his days, and the inscription on 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



169 



between Mr. Heywood and Mr. Dawson for the remainder 
of their lives, and we shall find them frequently acting in 
concert. 

Early in November he was again among his friends at 
Peniston, where he preached on the 5th of November, 
and again on the Wednesday following, being the Monthly 
Fast on account of the plague in London. While Mr. 
Heywood was preaching, they were alarmed by the ap- 
pearance of a few troopers at the church -gates, who were 
supposed to be sent by Sir Thomas Wentworth of Bret- 
ton, the principal magistrate in those parts of the county. 
He had several times before warned the people of Pe- 
niston to forbear. Mr. Heywood was guided out of the 
church and taken a back way to Water-hall, an old house 
of the Words worths, his great friends. It seems, how T ever, 
to have been a needless alarm, as he was left unmolested, 
and on the Friday preached again, a funeral sermon for 
the mother of his host. 

The next fast, the 6th of December, he kept at Den- 
ton, and he states that in the Christmas week, within the 
compass of eight days, he kept three fasts and preached 
nine several times. 

And thus ended the year 1665. 

his gravestone is still remaining in the chapel-yard of Morley, one of 
the few instances of such memorials outside of an edifice having 
been allowed to remain through one hundred and seventy years. 



170 



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CHAPTER IX. 
1666—1667. 

THE OXFORD OR FIVE MILE ACT. THE NON- CONFORMIST MINISTERS 

SUPPORTERS OF THE LIBERTIES OF ENGLAND. MR. HEYWOOD 

LEAVES HIS HOME IN CONSEQUENCE OF IT. TRAVELS IN CHESHIRE 

AND LANCASHIRE. RETURNS HOME, WHICH IS NOW COLEY-HALL. 

THE ACT VERY NEGLIGENTLY EXECUTED. HE PREACHES AS USUAL, 

ONLY MORE FREQUENTLY FROM HOME. HIS PREACHING TOURS IN 

YORKSHIRE, CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE. -HIS INTRODUCTION TO 

THE PURITAN GENTRY IN SOUTH YORKSHIRE. DR. HITCH. CON- 
VENTICLE AT BIRCH- HALL. THE BRINGING IN MAY. HIS SECOND 

MARRIAGE WITH MRS. ABIGAIL CROMPTON. 

The rumours of plots, on which so many persons were 
arrested in the autumn of 1665, were coincident in time 
with another oppressive measure directed against the 
Non-Conforming ministers. How many of the plots of 
which we hear so much in the history of the reign of 
Charles the Second were real, is a subject of historic 
doubt, but if there were any plots against the existing 
government which admitted of being charged upon the 
Non-Conformists, it is evident that it was not the Presby- 
terians who were concerned in them, but the remains of 
some of the sectaries who carried their principles quite to 
the extreme ; and it was thought a severe hardship upon 
the Presbyterians that pretence should be taken, from the 
disaffection of a small part of the Independents and Ana- 
baptists, to frame general measures which laid fresh diffi- 
culties in their way, and exposed them to fresh inconveni- 
ences ; and this, especially, as the Presbyterians were by 
far the largest body of Non- Conformists, so much so, 
that Rapin says, " they were considerably more numerous 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



171 



than all the other Non-Conformists together/' and also 
that " they had doctrines and interests really separate 
from those of the other sects # ." But it was the policy of 
those who directed public affairs to recognize no distinc- 
tion among the various bodies of Non-Conformists, but 
to treat all equally as enemies to the State and Church. 

This was very unjust, as neither in principle nor in 
practice were the Presbyterians enemies to the govern- 
ment. Tt may be doubted whether, in the preaching of 
any of the sectaries, there was anything properly seditious, 
but this certainly could not be charged upon the Presby- 
terian ministers, whose single aim in their preaching was 
the promotion of virtue and piety, and who wished for the 
overthrow neither of the State nor the Church. Their 
single disobedience to the law lay in their peaceable and 
effectual pleadings with their fellow-beings to remember 
their Christian obligations and to make themselves meet 
to share at last in the Christian promises. 

The existence of such a body of men was no real evil, 
as has since been shown in a long tract of time during 
which another policy has been pursued respecting them 
without any mischievous results. But suppose some evil 
did arise, it was hard to send men to loathsome gaols 
for the mere offence of preaching, or of going to hear a 
Christian discourse delivered by a Christian minister, 
and that in such numbers, that the loathsomeness and 
unwholesomeness of the old prisons of England were 
made still more afflictive. It brought back the recol- 
lection of the times, which were not much further remote 
from the times of which we are speaking than the Rebel- 
lion of 1745 is from the time in which we live, when 
they who were the fathers of the Church, as then restored, 
were crowded in dungeons before they came forth to 
public execution. 

It is fortunate for the interests of humanity, that 
there is a practical limit to the power of any government, 



* History of England, fol., 1743, vol. ii. p. 641. 



17*2 



THE LIFE OF 



when it would seek, by long imprisonments, to weary and 
break the spirits of any considerable number of its sub- 
jects. There cannot be towns of gaols and armies of 
gaolers, and large magazines of provisions. Two-thirds 
of a nation can hardly proceed in the way of imprison- 
ment against the other third, when they are obstinate or 
resolute. 

And so thought the statesmen of the time, and the 
new measure of oppression was framed accordingly. It 
was an Act of banishment against the Non-Conforming 
ministers, not from England, but from the places in which 
they were residing, and from all the incorporated towns. 
It provided that they were to remove to the distance of 
five miles from any place in which they had ever exer- 
cised their ministry, and not come, except when travelling, 
within the same distance of any city or corporate town. 
The penalty for each offence was forty pounds, one-third 
of which was to go to the informer. They might, how- 
ever, keep themselves out of the scope of the Act by 
taking the political oath prescribed in the Act of Uni- 
formity, with the additional clause, that "they would 
not at any time endeavour any alteration of government 
either in Church or State." This bill passed easily in 
the Commons, but in the Lords there was a strong op- 
position, headed by the Earl of Southampton and the 
Lord Wharton, who was through life a great friend and 
patron of the Puritan ministry. The royal assent was 
given to this heartless measure on the 3 1st of October, 
and it was to come into operation on the 24th of March 
following. 

Very few of the ministers took the oath. Of Mr. Hey- 
wood's friends Mr. Swift of Peniston is, I think, the only 
one who took it. And here it is that the Non- Conforming 
ministers stand forth prominently as protectors of the 
liberties of England. When they rejected the terms pro- 
posed in the Act of Uniformity, there were many circum- 
stances concurring with the objections to the political oath 
to induce them to refrain from complying. But in this 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



173 



case the political principle alone interferes to prevent them 
from saving themselves from the multiplied inconveni- 
ences of a forced removal from the places of their abode ; 
and they refuse to surrender that ultimate check on evil 
government which has its silent seat in the breasts and 
hands of a people. It is to be remembered that they 
were a body of men in whose minds conscientiousness 
was fully formed and deeply impressed, and who re- 
spected the sanctity of an oath. 

Mr. Heywood's family consisted at this time of his 
two sons, who were schoolboys at the newly founded 
school at Hipper holm, and a female servant, whose 
name, Martha B airs tow, deserves to be perpetuated on 
account of her long fidelity to her master and her care 
of his children. He continued the same course of 
preaching at distant places, as Shadwell, Leeds, Peniston 
and Denton, as he had done before, in the early months 
of this year ; but when the 24th of March was come and 
it was no longer lawful for him to remain at Coley, he 
took his departure from his home, leaving his children 
to the care of his servant. In this his course differed 
from that of many of his brethren, who, under the terror 
of the Act, removed their whole households from the 
places in which they were established, some to other 
parts of the country, but more to such towns as Man- 
chester, Bolton, Sheffield and Mansfield, where there 
was a considerable population, but where the inhabitants 
were not incorporated. He spent the 23rd of March at 
Halifax, in taking leave of his many friends there, and 
on the 24th he crossed the hills to Denton to join his 
father-in-law. " It was the weariest, most tedious jour- 
ney I have had that way, which I have gone many hun- 
dred times, but scarce ever with so sad a heart in so 
sharp a storm of weather." But there is another passage, 
penned apparently at the moment, which presents a more 
lively image of the good man as he travelled over the wea- 
risome hills which divide Yorkshire and Lancashire : — 
" Methinks this day of our scattering is a lively emblem of 



174 



THE LIFE OF 



our state ; and I could not but think of it as T travelled 
from mine own house to sojourn ; for all day it hath been 
terrible storms of hail and snow set on with a violent wind, 
yet it hath cleared presently, and after a short intermission 
of beautiful sunshine, suddenly overcast and darkening 
and snowing fast ; yet now from four o'clock till night 
very clear. Just such is the life of a Christian : but of 
this we may say, Nubecula est citb transitura ; and It's 
but a storm against the wall, and The end of a godly man 
is peace." 

He spent the next day, which was Sunday, with Mr. 
Angier ; and on the Monday morning the elder and the 
younger minister set out together, neither of them having 
apparently formed any plan beside that of paying short 
visits to some of the gentry of Cheshire, at whose houses 
Mr. Angier was always welcome. They went first to 
Mr. Hyde's of Norbury, an infirm old gentleman, having 
a sister living with him who was dumb and lame. There 
they remained two nights. They next visited Sir Thomas 
Stanley at Alderley, who had been created a baronet on 
the king's return. Here Mr. Hey wood, being requested 
to conduct the family prayers in the morning, had to 
resist a temptation " to study and speak handsome words 
with respect to the company," which was large. From 
thence they proceeded to Mobberley, where Mrs. Robin- 
son, an aunt of Mr. Angier's wife, resided; and from 
thence to Mr. Lea's of Darnall, where they were nobly 
treated and entertained. They remained there several 
days, and on the Sunday heard Mr. Hall, a Conformist, 
at the church of Over. On Tuesday they went, by in- 
vitation, to Mr. Crew's of Utkington, to keep a private 
fast. On the 11th they returned to Denton, where Mr. 
Angier, notwithstanding the Act, which was very loosely 
executed, continued to reside. 

Mr. Heywood did not so immediately return to his 
home. He proceeded to Manchester, where he heard 
Mr. Heyrick preach at the funeral of old Mr, Strange- 
ways, and then went on to Bolton. There he preached 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



175 



frequently, as also in his own house at Waterside, in 
which his father then lived. He kept a fast at Mr. 
Fogg's in Darcy Lever, where he was engaged in preach- 
ing and praying from eleven to five. On the 19th he 
went to Ormskirk to visit his brother, whom he found 
living in his own house unmolested, so unwilling are a 
magistracy to put in force penal laws which carry with 
them the marks of unreasonableness or extreme severity. 
His brother returned with him to Little Lever, and a fast 
was kept by them at Brightmet on account of a youth 
going to Cambridge. The two brothers went together 
to Manchester, where they found many of their " ba- 
nished brethren." The 2 9th of April was a busy day. 
Mr. Heywood preached in Manchester early in the morn- 
ing ; he then went to Prestwich, there to spend the 
Sunday in public ; and in the evening came to the house 
at Waterside, where Mr. Nathaniel Heywood preached 
to a considerable auditory. Monday was spent in a 
similar manner; and on Tuesday, the 1st of May, he 
set out on his return home. Four Non-Conformist 
ministers were lodged that night at the inn at Littlebo- 
rough, the well-known stage at the foot of Blackstone- 
Edge, namely, the two Mr. Hey woods, the younger 
Mr. Angier, a son of Mr. Angier of Denton, and Mr. 
Starkey, formerly a fellow of St. John's College, Cam- 
bridge, who removed to live amongst his own friends 
in Lancashire when he had been ejected from Grantham. 
Mr. Nathaniel Heywood and Mr. Angier went the next 
day to Coley, but Mr. Heywood and Mr. Starkey took 
their way to Bradford to visit Mr. Waterhouse, who re- 
mained there unmolested, at whose house they found old 
Mr. Elkana Wales, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Sharp, all 
Non-Conforming ministers, with whose company Mr. 
Heywood was much refreshed. At night, when they 
were preparing to retire to rest, Mr. Heywood left Mr. 
Waterhouse's, and came secretly to his own house. 
Thus were the first six weeks spent by him after the 
Five Mile Act came into operation. 



176 



THE LIFE OF 



During his absence his family had removed from the 
house which he had inhabited since 1660 on Norwood- 
green, to Coley-hall, " a sweet habitation near the cha- 
pel," which he shared with Captain Hodgson. 

He remained at home for a fortnight, during the whole 
of which time he had frequent services at his house, and 
neither the interference of the magistracy nor the cu- 
pidity of any private informer occasioned him any incon- 
venience. The only difference between his condition after 
this Act came into operation, and before, seems to be, 
that he deemed it prudent to be more frequently absent 
than before. We find him making a round of visits 
among his friends who lived in the pleasant tract of 
country between the Wharf and the Aire, going first to 
Bingley, where he found Mr. Bentley complaining of an 
unsuitable abode. He passed from thence to Menston 
to visit Colonel Charles Fairfax (a brother of old Ferdi- 
nando Lord Fairfax), the antiquary of a family to whom 
religion and learning have many obligations. From 
thence he went to Mr. Dyneley's at Bramhope, where 
he spent several days, and then removed to Rawden, in 
the parish of Guiseley, where a very old Mr. Rawden 
resided, father, it is believed, of Sir George Rawden, 
at whose house he preached to a large auditory. Thus 
we see that some of the principal gentry of the country 
did not scruple to countenance Mr. Hey wood in doing 
that which was opposed to the law. The truth is, they 
knew the integrity of his heart, and they saw and felt the 
value of his services to the cause of virtue and religion. 

From Mr. Rawden 's he proceeded to Bramley, where 
he was received at the house of Elias Hinchball, a man 
of less note, though perhaps not of less worth. Here a 
number of persons assembled from Leeds and other 
neighbouring places, and Mr. Heywood continued his 
discourse to them till almost midnight. On the next 
day he ventured into Leeds itself, a prohibited place, 
and where there were several persons in the magistracy 
very zealous for the suppression of conventicle preach- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



177 



ing. He preached, however, at night in the house of 
John Cummin to a very great number of persons. He 
slept at the house of Robert Hickson, the most eminent 
favourer of Non-Conformity at Leeds in its then inci- 
pient state. The next night he preached at Hunslet, at 
the house of GerTery Beck ; and on Thursday went to 
Wakefield, where he preached at the house of Mrs. Eli- 
zabeth Riddlesden. On Saturday he kept a fast at Mr. 
Kirby's, and rode the same evening to Periston, where 
he preached on the Sunday openly in the Church. On 
Monday he came to Alverthorpe, near Wakefield, where 
he was entertained at the house of John Kirk, and 
preached at Thomas Holdsworth's. On Tuesday he 
went to Mr. Thorpe's, at Hopton, a minister silenced 
by the Act of Uniformity, though it does not appear 
that he had any pastoral charge. He remained there 
two or three days, and then proceeded to Slaughthwaite 
to visit Robert Binns. I give these details, partly to 
show how Mr. Heywood was at this time employed, and 
partly in what places he sowed the seed which sprang 
up afterwards in the form of Presbyterian dissent. 

He returned home on the 1st of June, and on the 4th 
kept a day of thanksgiving with Captain Hodgson " for 
God's mercy to him in his deliverance out of prison," 
where he had been confined since the arrest of the Hali- 
fax men in the August of the preceding year. 

Mr. Heywood has a very pertinent remark on the 
effects of the Five Mile Act. It tended, he says, verv 
much to the furtherance of the gospel by producing 
" strange thoughts of heart and strong workings of 
affection at parting, and by causing doors to be opened 
in many places far more than was the case before," and 
by enlarging the acquaintance of the ministers. In fact 
it operated, as persecution generally does, to give union 
and intensity to the persecuted, and to open the springs 
of sympathy in good and compassionate hearts. 

Sunday, June 17, he spent at Bramley, where he 
preached three times, and found the hearts of the people 

N 



178 



THE LIFE OF 



much affected. This is a phrase which he often uses ; 
but there are no traces in his diaries of those violent 
effects which attended the ministry of the two founders 
of methodism in the succeeding century, w T ith whose, in 
other respects, Mr. Hey wood's course at this time may 
be compared. 

On the 19th he set out on a journey to Lancashire, 
keeping a fast at Sowerby by the way with his friend 
Mr. Dawson. He visited Rochdale, and Bury where 
was the funeral of his aunt Winstanley, at which his 
brother-in-law, the younger Angier, preached what Mr. 
Hey wood calls " a rhetorical sermon." This Mr. An- 
gier appears to have degenerated from the habits and 
manners of his family # . Mr. Hey wood preached on 
the Saturday night, and kept the Sunday at the house 
in Little Lever in w 7 hich he was born ; and on Monday 
to a company of women at Manchester on his way to 
Denton, where the remainder of the week was spent, 
Mr. Seddon, another ejected minister who still continued 
to preach, conducting the service on the Sunday. 

Mr. Angier took him another journey among the 
gentry of Cheshire. They went first to Dunham, the 
seat of Lord Delamere, the Sir George Booth of 1659, 
" where we were nobly treated, yet I thought home and 
heaven is better than all this : I had affecting considera- 
tions of the excellency of grace beyond all this worldly 
pomp and splendour." On the next day they went to 
the house of Mr. Venables, of Agden, and thence to 
Mr. Lea's, of Darnall, where Mrs. Lea was lately dead. 
They paid a visit to Mr. Crew at Utkington, and then 
proceeded to Sandbach to wait on Mrs. Shawcross, aunt 

* When enumerating the afflictions of the older Mr. Angier, Mr. 
Hey wood speaks thus : — " His son, his only son, devoted to God not 
only in Christian profession but ministerial function, miscarrying 
under such education, with such aggravations," &c. — Works, 8vo, 
1827, vol. i. p. 552. He is to be distinguished from another Mr. 
Angier, a minister whose name will now frequently occur, who was 
a nephew of old Mr. Angier of Denton, and like him a Non- Conform- 
ing minister. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



179 



to a lady to whose hand Mr. Heywood was at this 
time making pretension. They then proceeded to the 
house of Mr. Union, near Talk-on-the-Hill, " who is 
something a deformed man and hath a comely wife, and 
is exceeding jealous of her ; will needs be divorced from 
her ; disowns some children ; shuts her up upon no real 
ground but his own melancholic conceits.'* From thence 
they proceeded to Leek, and ' 'visited one Mrs. Parker, 
Colonel Venables' daughter, who married against her 
father's consent : the thing is sadly aggravated, and he 
wonderfully exasperated against her ; she weeps bitterly ; 
hath buried two children : there God made me of some 
use # ." They then returned to Denton. 

In this summer we find him also attending a sister, 
who was ill, to the Spa at Knaresborough, which had 
been brought into repute by the writings of Dr. Dean 
and Dr. Wittie. Many persons from Leeds were there, 
and Mr. Heywood soon collected a little congregation, 
to whom he preached at widow Hogg's. He kept a 
private fast at Francis Ingle's, near the wells. On his 
return he visited Mr. Dyneley ; but he accompanied his 
sister to Little Lever, preaching, as before, every day at 
Bolton and the villages around. Returning home, he 
paid visits at Chadwick-hall, near Rochdale, to Mr. 

* Mrs. Parker was the mother of no less a person than Sir Tho- 
mas Parker, the first Earl of Macclesfield. This gives a value to the 
anecdote, and the rather as the name and family of the lady are not 
found in the peerages. As the earl was in his sixty- sixth year at 
the time of his death, April 28, 1732, it may be that the lady was 
enceinte of this great birth when the two divines were at her house. 
She died in 1699, and was buried in the church of Wirks worth in 
Derbyshire. Her father, Colonel Robert Venables, had been Go- 
vernor of Chester in the Civil Wars, and was sent by Cromwell 
against Hispaniola. The narrative of the expedition is in Dr. Leo- 
nard Howard's Collection of Letters, 4to, 1753, pp. 1 — 21. There is 
a treatise on Angling, by him, which was reprinted in 1825. In Mr. 
Heywood's Obituary we find that he died in 1687, and was buried 
on the 26th of July. See, for this branch of the ancient family of 
Venables, Harl. MS. 2119, f. 13, where are shown three marriages 
of the Colonel and members of his family with the Leas of Darnall, 
friends of Mr. Angier. 

N 2 



180 



THE LIFE OF 



Horton at Sowerby, and to Mrs. Root, near Sowerby- 
bridge. 

He remained at borne about a fortnight, preaching in 
his own house on the Sundays, where he had about forty 
persons to hear him, and keeping fast-days. One of 
them was at the house of Mary Wright, " a hearty, 
affectionate, active Christian, a dear companion to my 
sweet wife. 5 ' She was ill, and died. Another was with 
Jonathan Priestley, who was also ill, but recovered. He 
was a principal member of a very numerous family of the 
name, eminent among the early Non-Conformists of the 
parish of Halifax. 

On the 22nd of August he again left his house on 
another tour of nocturnal preachings. He visited Bram- 
ley, exposing himself again to the danger of the Leeds 
magistracy. He travelled with Mr. Y^ales, who was 
forced by the Act to leave his home, and was then on 
his w r ay to the north with his wife # . He inspected a 
house, to which some of his friends wished him to re- 
move that he might not be exposed to so much peril 
under the Act, but declined to take it. He visited 
Wakefield, where he ke; t a fast at Mr. Kirby's, and 
preached on a Sunday in the church of Peniston both 
morning and evening, and " had a large auditory and 
sweet enlargements." On this journey he visited parts 
of Yorkshire which he had not seen before. Mr. Swift 
and Mr. Richardson, another Non-Conforming minister 
who lived at Lassel-hall in the parish of Kirk-Heton, 
went with Mr. Heywood to Rotherham to visit Mr. 

* The wife of Mr. Wales was Elizabeth Clavering, of Calliley, in 
Northumberland, aunt to Sir James Clavering of Axwell, who " had 
in the eminency of her Christian graces what she wanted in what 
the moralists of the world call the amiableness of a good nature." 
This is said of her by Ambrose Barnes, who knew her well, having 
married one of her daughters of a former marriage with Thomas 
Butler, a merchant of Newcastle. He says of Mr. Wales, that he 
was of a mild disposition, and not to be drawn from his people at 
Pudsey by very tempting offers made to him by Lord Fairfax, who 
greatly esteemed him. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



181 



Clayton, who had been the minister there before the 
Act, and who continued to reside there ; and the next 
day they went on to Sheffield, where they visited Mr. 
Birkbeck, who had been turned out of the church of 
Ackworth near Pontefract, and afterwards Mr. Rowland 
Hancock, who had been turned out of the place of one 
of the assistant ministers in the church of Sheffield, and 
who then lived in the wild country about BradfiekL 
On their return they visited Mr. Cotes, another Non- 
Conforming minister, who had fixed his residence at the 
pleasant little town of Wath-upon-Dearne. They then 
passed to Swathe-hall, in the neighbourhood of Wors- 
borough, where resided a member of the family of 
Wordsworth, a gentleman of good estate, and connected 
with the principal Puritan families in those parts of the 
country # , whose house was always open to the Non- 
Conforming ministry. Mr. Heywood next visited the 
cheerful little village of Cawthorn, and preached there 
at a friend's house in the night. From thence he passed 
to Denton, having Mr. Hawden, who had been ejected 
at Brodsworth, in his company. He preached publicly 
there on Sunday the 2nd of September. He returned 
to Peniston, where he kept the fast on account of the 
plague on the 5th, preaching publicly from ten till four. 
He then returned through Wakefield home. 

He writes thus on the *24th of September: — " The 
Lord hath thus long graciously continued me in safety 
at mine own house ; and I have spent three Lord's Days 
at home, and have had above three-score on a-day ; kept 
a fast, preached on the week-days, and found much of 
the Lord's gracious presence and wonderful providence 
watching over me, though it was pretty generally known 

* Mr. Heywood was a very frequent visitor at Swathe-hall in the 
time of Mr. Wordsworth, who died in 1690. Three of his wives, — 
for he was four times married, — were daughters respectively of per- 
sons who had been leaders in the Puritan movement of the late times, 
namely, Robert Hyde of Denton, Mr. Angiers friend, Major Spencer 
of Attercliffe, and Sir Edward Rodes of Great Houghton, 



182 



THE LIFE OF 



that I was at home, God stirring up many from several 
parts to come to spend the Sabbath with me." On that 
day, however, he again left his home, going to Hag- 
stocks, and Bowood, where he visited his " good friend " 
James Robinson, and so to Rochdale. There he lodged 
at the house of Matthew Hallowes, and preached ; as he 
did on the following day, at Chad wick-hall, reaching 
Little Lever at night. On the Friday night he preached 
at Mr. Whitehead's, who had married his sister, and on 
Saturday at Thomas Crompton's. He spent the Sunday 
in the house where he was born , where his sister White- 
head and her husband then lived, "and God helped 
wonderfully to preach and pray amongst some hundreds 
of people." On Monday night he preached at Joseph 
Moxon's, in Bolton. On Tuesday he went to Orms- 
kirk to visit his brother, but not finding him at home 
(for he was absent, " being as busy at work as I,") went 
to Eccleston and Leland, and returned to Bolton on 
Thursday in time to preach at night at the house of 
George Holt. On the next night he preached at Lau- 
rence Crompton's, and spent the Sunday at Mr. Brown's 
at Holcombe in the parish of Bury. On the Monday 
he passed to Denton, visiting Manchester in the way. 
On the Tuesday, accompanied by his cousin Bradshaw, 
an ejected minister, he visited again his favourite and 
favoured Peniston, and kept there the public fast for the 
burning of London, " the Lord assisting us both very 
graciously." On the Thursday Mr. Jollie was with 
them, and the three ministers kept a fast at the house 
of Isaac Wadsworth (Wordsworth), " a good man, but 
much afflicted." On Friday he was at Cawthorne, 
where he visited the families of Nathaniel Bottomley 
and his brother Roebuck, who was sick. On the Sa- 
turday he arrived at Swathe-hall, and preached in the 
night. In the morning he was away early and back to 
Peniston, no very short or easy ride, where he preached 
in the afternoon, Mr. Bradshaw preaching in the morn- 
ing. He lodged with the Wordsworths at Waterhall. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



183 



On the Monday he set his face homewards, visiting 
Mrs. Richardson, the wife of Mr. Richardson the ejected 
minister, and Mr. Thorpe, another ejected minister, 
reaching home on the 15th of October, having been 
absent three weeks. Some change had taken place in 
the abode of his family during his absence, though still 
inhabiting Coley-hall. This led him to remark, " What 
a clear emblem am both I and my family of a flitting 
condition in this world ! " 

Mr. Heywood began to be weary of this rambling life, 
and he entertained at this time serious thoughts of re- 
moving himself and his family into Lancashire, where 
he might live in his own house in peace. He had also 
another inducement, — the better opportunities which he 
should have for the education of his sons, who were now 
of the ages of nine and ten years # . The change in his 
intention he attributes entirely to the persuasive impor- 
tunity of his kind neighbours and hearers. 

" Here I stayed at home almost three weeks, in which 
time I preached in mine own house three times every 
week (besides some work abroad), where we had more 
solemn and numerous meetings than formerly, almost 
an hundred persons at once. We have a more private 
place than ever before, where I can sing and speak as 
loud as I please without fear of being overheard." On 
the 3rd of November we find him again at Peniston, 
where he preached on the next day, being Sunday, and 
" enjoyed the sweet sealing ordinance of the Lord's 
Supper according to institution." Mr. Modesley ad- 
ministered it. On Monday, the 5th of November, Mr. 
Garside preached, who was the Cheshire Non-Conform- 
ing minister of that name. On the Tuesday, he, Mr. 

* Mr. Heywood notices, about this time, the appearances of reli- 
gion in the minds of his two sons. He once heard them repeating, 
while in bed, long passages of Scripture, the younger the 10th chap- 
ter of the Book of Revelation, and the elder the 12th. They had 
learned catechisms long before, and had indeed been brought up very 
much as Mr. Heywood had himself been educated. 



184 THE LIFE OF 

Hey wood and Mr. Hawden kept a fast with Leonard 
Appleyard, of the parish of Peniston, " a good man." 
On the Wednesday he kept the monthly fast in public, 
and went that evening to Mr. Sotwell's at Cat-hill, and 
on Thursday to Mr. Cotton's at Moor-end, in the ad- 
joining parish of Silkston. On the Friday he went to 
Mr. Wordsworth's at Swathe-hall, where he kept the 
Sabbath with great satisfaction. 

On the Monday Mr. Wordsworth and he travelled to 
Rotherham to visit Mr. Clayton, at whose house they 
found Mr. Hancock, who accompanied them to Laugh- 
ton-en-le-Morthen, where resided Mr. John Hatfield, a 
gentleman of good estate and a member of a very exten- 
sive family connexion, including most of the principal 
gentry in those parts of Yorkshire, who had been ex- 
ceedingly active in all the Puritan efforts of the preceding 
times. It included the Westbys of Ravenfield, the Spen- 
cers of Attercliffe, the Brights of Carbrook, the Gills of 
Car-house, the Rodes of Great Houghton, the Stani- 
forths of Firbeck, the Knights of Langold, and the Tay- 
lors of Wallingwells. The heads of several of these 
families had eminent military command in the wars, and 
others had served the Parliament as members of com- 
mittees for divers purposes in the West Riding. Of this 
circle of Parliamentarian families the town of Rotherham 
may be regarded as the centre, and there were few parts 
of England where the Puritan principle prevailed in an 
equal extent among the families of the best account. This 
was Mr. Heywood's first introduction among them, and 
we shall find as we proceed that he was frequently re- 
ceived by them at their halls, and that his ministerial 
services were highly acceptable. At Laughton he found 
the Mrs. Martha Hatfield mentioned in a note at p. 167, 
of whom he only says that there ' 'were many strange 
things recorded in a book concerning her." She was 
sister to his host ; and the author of the book in which 
her sayings during the paroxysms of her extraordinary 
complaint are treasured up, was Mr. Fisher, the ejected 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



185 



vicar of Sheffield, who had married a sister of her father, 
Mr. Anthony Hatfield. Mr. John Hatfield was twice 
married, first to a Disney of Swinderby, and afterwards 
to Antonina Norcliffe, a daughter of Lady Norcliffe of 
Langton, who was by birth a Fairfax, whose kindness to 
the Non-Conforming ministry is celebrated by Dr. Ca- 
lamy. At Laughton also he met with Mr. Whitehurst, 
who had been ejected from the church of that town, but 
was living there undisturbed, notwithstanding the Act. 

Mr. Heywood's visit was very short, as was always 
the case with him. From Laughton he was taken to 
Ravenfield, where Mr. George Westby resided, when his 
acquaintance with that family began. He passed to the 
house of Mr. Cotes at Wath, thence to Mr. Words- 
worth's at Swathe-hall, and returned home, preaching 
at Wakefield by the way. 

He recommenced his itinerant labours on Monday, 
the 3rd of December. On this occasion he went first 
to Mr. John Sharp's at Little Horton, near Bradford, 
the father of Mr. Thomas Sharp who had been ejected 
at Addle. Addle had been a sequestered parsonage, 
Dr. Hitch having been removed in the Parliament times 
in pursuance of an ordinance against pluralities # . A 
religious meeting was appointed at Horton, at which 

* Of this eminent churchman there are many notices in Mr. Hey- 
wood's papers, of which the most material is the following- : — " Fe- 
bruary 10, 1676-7, died Dr. Hitch, dean of York, parson of Guiseley 
(where he died, and was buried February 16), vicar of Normanton, 
parson of Addle, aged eighty-two, one of the richest churchmen in 
the country. He stated his son in 1100/. a-year, and his grand- 
child in 200/. a-year. He gave the parsonage of Addle, with his 
daughter, to Dr. Brearey, who thereupon turned from being a civi- 
lian to be a preacher. He had resigned Addle in the Parliament 
time, who had passed an Act against pluralities, but at the king's 
return sued for it again, and cast Mr. Arthington, as having done it 
unwillingly. He used to boast that for divinity, law, and physic he 
would play with any man. A man of parts ; he practised physic ; 
was said to be in a consumption thirty years before he died." If 
there were many such instances as this, we cannot much wonder at 
the Puritan objections to a state of things which allowed of them. 
Dr. Hitch's posterity flourished at Leathley for several generations. 



186 



THE LIFE OF 



Mr. Sharp the younger was to have preached, but the 
work was put upon Mr. Heywood, who was always 
ready and always welcome. On Tuesday night he 
preached at Mr. Rawden's of Rawden ; on Wednesday 
at Joseph Kitchen's, at Farsley ; on Thursday at Leeds ; 
on Friday he visited Mr. Clayton of Okenshaw ; and on 
Saturday reached the house of Sir Edward Rodes of 
Great Houghton, who had invited him # . He spent the 
Sunday there " with much comfort." On Monday he 
was at Wath ; on Tuesday visited Mr. Vincent at Barn- 
borough-grange f ; and on Thursday came to Swathe- 
hall. He preached at Peniston on the Sunday ; on 
Monday visited Mrs. Sotwell at Cat-hill, and " dined at 
Gunthwaite with Major Sedascue, a German j." Though 

* Sir Edward Rodes was a son of Sir Godfrey Rodes, and grand- 
son of Francis Rodes, a judge in the reign of Elizabeth. He was in 
possession of the estate of Great Houghton at the beginning of the 
Civil Wars, and one of the first acts of hostility in those parts of 
Yorkshire was an attack upon his house there in the beginning of 
September 1642. He was closely united in opinion with the Ho- 
thams, and it was chiefly through the opposition which this party 
made to it that the scheme for the neutrality of Yorkshire in the 
impending contest was frustrated. But he was soon amongst those 
who wished to retrace their steps, and was arrested with the two 
Hothams and committed to the Tower. He however served the 
Parliament faithfully in a military capacity, and afterwards under 
Cromwell in Scotland, of whose Privy Council he was, and member 
in one of his parliaments for the shire of Perth. After the Restora- 
tion he lived quietly at Houghton, where he died in February 1667, 
a few weeks after Mr. Heywood's visit. In 1650 he founded a cha- 
pel, near the hall, for the performance of religious service. 

f This was the head of another of the large landed families in 
those parts of the West Riding, father-in-law to Mr. Samuel Cotes, 
the ejected minister, then living at Wath. He died on July 15, 1667, 
64 fide evangelica, vere catholica," an expression in his epitaph in 
the church of Barnborough which appears to be directed against his 
neighbours at the Hall, the Mores, descendants of Sir Thomas More, 
and inheritors of his attachment to the Roman Catholic Church. 

X Gunthwaite was the seat of the Bosviles, two of whom had been 
distinguished on the Parliament side in the wars ; but they were both 
dead, and the estate was at this time a minor's. Major Sedascue, 
who inhabited the house, had married one of the Bosviles. He was 
a Bohemian, a supporter of the Elector Palatine, on whose defeat he 



OLIVER HhYWOOD. 



187 



it was the depth of winter, he set out after dinner from 
Gunthwaite for Denby- grange ; but having received 
wrong instructions concerning the road, and it being a 
thick mist, he lost his way on Emley-moor, and so 
turned to Hopton-hall. After two days' stay there he 
visited Lassel-hall and Denby-grange, reaching home on 
the 19th of December. 

These notes of Mr. Heywood's, of his itinerant labours, 
bring us acquainted with the persons who in those parts 
of Yorkshire and Lancashire opened their houses to the 
Non-Conforming ministry when they were preaching in 
open defiance of the law, and were the fathers of Pro- 
testant Dissent in those parts. They present information 
which is of the most authentic kind, and they are now, 
it is believed, the sole remaining memorials of what was 
done in preparation for the rise of the various Non- 
Conforming societies which arose in this district. And 
with the view of perpetuating their names and services, 
and giving definiteness to this portion of English eccle- 
siastical history, I proceed to give further accounts of 
the journeys of this indefatigable man at this period of 
his life. 

On December 31, 1666, he set out for Lancashire, 
baptizing a child at Halifax by the way, and preaching 
at Rochdale at night. On the next day he was at Little 
Lever, where he met his brother, Mr. Nathaniel Hey- 
wood, and they preached together at the houses of their 
three brothers-in-law, who resided in that neighbour- 
hood, William Whitehead, Thomas Crompton, and Sa- 
muel Bradley, to a multitude of auditors. On the 
Monday he went to Bolton, and " at night up to High 
Horrocks, where he preached on Tuesday all day," re- 
turning to Bolton, where at night he preached at the 
house of George Holt. On Wednesday he preached at 
Thomas Mason's at Little Lever, and at night at Peter 
Heywood's. On Thursday a solemn fast was kept at 

fled to England, and became an officer in the Parliament army. He 
died at Heath-hall, near Wakefield, in 1688. 



188 



THE LIFE OF 



William Whitehead's. On Friday he went to Manches- 
ter, and preached at night at the house of Mr. James 
Hulton of Droilsden, an old Commonwealth officer. 
He passed on to Denton, and preached at the chapel on 
Sunday. On Monday he accompanied Mr. Angier to 
Mobberley to the funeral of old Mrs, Robinson, and 
slept at Knutsford at the house of Mr. Antrobus, " who 
used me exceeding courteously." He remained a day 
or two at Denton, and on his return dined at Mr, Ran's 
at Ashton-under-Line, and lodged at Chadwick-hall, 
which we now find to have been the residence of a re- 
lative named Edmund Hill. 

A singular circumstance had just occurred in the 
neighbourhood of Manchester, of which I find no notice 
in Mr. Heywood's papers, and derive my information 
from another source. Colonel Birch, a Parliamentary 
officer, permitted two wandering ministers from Ger- 
many to preach at Birch-hall on Sunday the 18th of 
November, 1666. They were engaged from nine to 
three speaking very fluently, denouncing all manner of 
woe to England, and exhorting people to fly and take 
refuge in Germany. They sang two German hymns with 
well-tuned voices, the purport of one of which, when sung 
at the house of an old Commonwealth officer, beginning 

" Hark how the trumpet sounds," 
might well excite some alarm in the minds of the neigh- 
bouring Royalists. The magistrates took the opportunity 
of putting the Conventicle Act in force against Colonel 
Birch and several persons who were present at this meet- 
ing, amongst whom was the wife of Ralph Worsley, a 
gentleman of Rusholm, ancestor of the Worsleys of Piatt, 
friends of the Non-Conformists. Against the Non- 
Conforming ministers, the magistrates of South Lanca- 
shire had acted with much moderation. 

Mr. Heywood remained at home for a fortnight, 
preaching on Sundays and week-days as usual, and on 
January 31 set out on another preaching tour, which 
was this time in Yorkshire. On that night he and Mr. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



189 



Sharp preached at Bowling, near Bradford ; on Friday 
he lodged at Mr. Sale's of Pudsey, and on Saturday 
went forward to Bramley, where he preached three times 
on the Sunday. He preached again at Samuel Ellison's, 
near Bramley, on the Monday, and on Tuesday ventured 
to enter the corporate town of Leeds, where he visited 
friends, baptized several children, but, being indisposed, 
was unable to preach. On the next day he was better 
and preached, visited a sick person, and then travelled 
to Bramhope, where he prayed with Mr. William Dyne- 
ley, then near his death in a consumption, and afterwards 
preached to the household. He preached to them again 
in the morning, and then proceeded to Mr. Eawden's of 
Raw den , where he preached on Friday, February 8. He 
returned home by Bradford, where he lodged at the house 
of Mr. Waterhouse, the minister. 

On Friday, the 15th, he set out again. He went first 
to Slaughthwaite, where he lodged at the house of Robert 
Binns, w T here the younger of the two Roots then lived, 
whom he sent to Coley in his absence. From thence he 
went to Denton, where he preached, and heard his cousin 
Samuel Angier, who was then newly come out of Essex 
to assist his uncle, in the other part of the day. He spent 
some days visiting friends about Stockport and Manches- 
ter ; spent some days at Little Lever, preaching six times ; 
returned to Denton, and his cousin Samuel Angier ac- 
companied him to his house at Coley, where Mr. Jollie 
met him. They kept a thanksgiving day for Jonathan 
Priestley's recovery. 

On Friday, March 15, he went to Wakefield, where 
he lodged with his good friend William Heaw T ard, and 
preached at Mr. Kirby's on Saturday morning. He 
spent the Sunday, preaching as usual, at Peniston, and 
lodged at the house of Thomas Hague of Carlcotes, then 
newly married to a friend of Mr. Hey wood's. He went 
from thence to Denton, where he kept a private fast at 
Mrs. Arderne's at Denton-hall ; six ministers were en- 
gaged. On Wednesday he went to Little Lever, where 



190 



THE LIFE OF 



he preached at James Barlow's and elsewhere, and, re- 
turning to Denton, preached twice on the Sunday. He 
visited Manchester and Rochdale, and returned home 
on the 27th. 

On Saturday, April 6, he went again to Peniston, Mr. 
Dawson accompanying him. They visited Mr. Thorpe 
by the way. He preached twice on the Sunday " called 
Easter Day," which is the way in which, with a not very 
intelligible scrupulosity, he speaks of the ancient Christian 
festivals, Easter and Christmas. There was a large as- 
sembly. On Monday he was at William Roebuck's at 
Cawthorne, where he met Mr. Kirby to hold a prayer- 
meeting on a special occasion. On the next day he rode 
to Denton and forward to Manchester. 

He stayed at Manchester to " hold a consultation 
about a solemn business," which was nothing less than 
his own intended marriage. The lady was Abigail 
Crompton, one of many daughters of James Crompton # 
of Brightmet, in the parish of Bolton, one of the good 
old Puritan families of that parish. She was at that time 
thirty- two years old. He spent a few days in the neigh- 
bourhood, his brother, Mr. Nathaniel Hey wood, meeting 
him, and returned to Coley on the 12th. 

On the 18th he was away again, into the heart of the 
West Riding, preaching first at the house of William 

* There was, as we have seen, a previous connexion between Mr. 
Heywood's family and the Cromptons at Brightmet, by the marriage 
of his sister Hannah with Thomas Crompton of that village, and even 
a still earlier consanguinity. How Thomas and James were related, 
does not appear ; nor how either of them stood related to Abraham 
Crompton of the same place, the father of John Crompton, a minister, 
who w r as born at Brightmet, and ejected at Arnold, in Nottingham- 
shire. But no doubt there was a near consanguinity among them. 
John Crompton, the ejected minister, had two sons, both of whom 
were the ancestors of families of great worth and respectability. The 
elder, Abraham, was the ancestor of Sir Samuel Crompton, who was 
created a baronet in 1837, and of several other families of the name 
settled in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire ; the younger, Sa- 
muel, was a Non- Conforming minister at Doncaster, and was the 
ancestor of families of the name at Gainsborough and Birmingham. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



191 



Thompson, near Kirkstall-abbey, where he had a great 
auditory. On the next day he preached at Leeds, " at 
the house of Matthew Boyse, a godly ancient Christian, 
that hath been in New England # ." At night he went 
to Mr. Ralph Spencer's, a merchant of Leeds, and on 
the next day to Mr. Rawden's at Rawden, where he spent 
the Sunday and conducted a service,, which he concluded 
the earlier, because Dr. Hitch, the dean of York and 
rector of Guiseley, in which parish Mr. Rawden lived, 
was " to pay that ancient gentleman a visit that day, 
which he did." Mr. Hey wood does not inform us whe- 
ther he had on this occasion an interview with the dean. 
He left Mr. Rawden on Monday, and proceeded to B ram- 
ley, which appears to have been a favourite place, and 
at night preached at Farsley, at the house of Joseph 
Kitchen. The next day he was applied to by a gentle- 
woman of Pudseyf and two other persons under great 
trouble of mind ; and, visiting Mr. Sharp by the way, 
arrived at home on the 23rd. 

April 29, he set out for Lancashire; lodged and 
preached at Matthew Hallowes' at Rochdale ; and lodged 
the next night at Mr. Hulton's at Manchester. " That 
night," says he, " they have a foolish custom after twelve 
o'clock to rise and ramble abroad, make garlands, strew 
flowers, &c, which they call Bringing in May. I could 
sleep little that night by reason of the tumult." This 
was one of the ancient and beautiful customs of the 
country with which the spirit of Puritanism had long 
been at war. It had spoken in the reign of Elizabeth, 
by the mouth of Philip Stubbs, in his ' Anatomy of 
Abuses,' and, in later times more feebly, by the mouth 
of Thomas Hall, the ejected minister of King's Norton, 
in his 'Downfall of May-games j.' He went the next 

* Father, I believe, of Boyse, the Non- Conforming minister at 
Dublin, author of various works. 

t No doubt, Mrs. Milner, as appears afterwards. 

X Mr. Heywood had fully imbibed the spirit of writings such as 
these : — " At the very time the king came in, 1660, at Chorley there 



192 



THE LIFE OF 



morning to Denton, and on the following day accom- 
panied his sister and cousin Angier to visit his brother 
Angier at Dean, where he left them and proceeded to 
Little Lever. The next morning he went to Heaton- 
hall, near Prestwich, on business to Mr. Lawrence Fog, 
and then to James Hardman's of Bradfield, near Hey- 
wood-chapel, where he preached. He was then on his 
way towards home, and one is tempted to ask, how it 
is that we see nothing of Brightmet and Mrs, Abigail 
Crompton, in contemplation of his marriage with whom 
he had kept the 25th of April, " that the Almanacks 
call St. Mark's Day," as a religious solemnity. He 
called at his cousin Edmund Hill's ; then on Mrs. Hor- 
ton* of Barkisland, " who was to send her son to Oxford 
on Monday morning," and that night came to Robert 
Ramsden's house, near Ealand-park, where he preached 
on Sunday, May 5, and came to his own house at night. 
In the morning he took leave of Captain Hodgson's son, 
who was going with Mr. Thomas Horton to Oxford. 

Thursday, May 23, he set out again for Lancashire, 
taking his children and servant with him. They spent 
several days with Mr. Angier at Denton, one of which 
was the anniversary day of the king's return, when there 
was a service in which Mr. Heywood took a part. He 
then went to Bolton ; preached at his brother Thomas 
Crompton's in Brightmet ; kept a fast at his father's 
house at Waterside, preached at Adam Ferniside's, and 
at his uncle Francis Critchlaw's. He returned home by 
Denton. 

was a stately May-pole erected, upon which was set a crown and a 
cross with a coat of arms, and adorned with brave garlands. At 
certain times every year they met there, and had hired a piper to 
play on Sundays and holy- days ; and had very lately dressed it. But 
in July, 1666, there was terrible thunder, and the thunder-bolt split 
it to shivers, and carried the ornaments nobody knows whither, and 
broke it to the very bottom, though set two yards within the ground. 
This is a certain truth ; I looked at the place." 

* Wife or widow of Mr. Heywood's landlord at Coley-hall. The 
son here mentioned settled in the country, married one of the daugh- 
ters of Thornhill of Fixby, and died in 1699, leaving co-heirs. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



193 



Wednesday, January 19, he went to Sheffield, on a 
special call to keep a fast at Mr. Birkbeck's house ; 
" where I preached and went to prayer, but found not 
wonted enlargement or assistance ; as to personal mat- 
ters I was in some measure helped, but in public con- 
cernments I was much straitened. It was a solemn day ; 
we were ten ministers ; good old Mr. Wales concluded 
the work. The truth is, there was a choice minister, 
one Mr. Sylvester # of Mansfield, whom the Lord did 
wonderfully carry out in the duty of prayer. Blessed be 
God for that day." He visited Mr. Sotwell at Cat-hill, 
and his friends at Wakefield, in his way home. 

On June 25, he went again into Lancashire ; and on 
Thursday, the 27th, was married by Mr. Hide at Salford 
Chapel. Nearly twenty persons were at the wedding, but 
all of the nearest relations to the parties. On the Sun- 
day after he went to the church at Manchester, where he 
heard Mr. Weston, and in the afternoon to the chapel 
at Salford, where Mr. Hide preached ; and at night he 
himself preached at Mr. Hulton's, whom he now begins 
to call brother, the wife of Mr. Hulton being a sister to 
his bride. It may be presumed that at this time his sen- 
tence of excommunication had been removed. 

Mr. Heywood was not to be long detained from his 
beloved work. On the Tuesday we find him engaged 
with Mr. Newcome and Mr. Finch in keeping a fast at 
Hulm-hall with his aunt Moseleyf . In the course of the 
week they visited Mr. Heywood's relations at Bolton 
and in the neighbourhood. On the Sunday he attended 
the church at Bolton, but preached himself at night; 

* This was Mr. Matthew Sylvester, ejected at Gunnerby, in Lin- 
colnshire, who appears to have been at this time residing among 
his relations of the same name at Mansfield, a town to which several 
of the Non-Conformist ministers retired during the existence of the 
Five Mile Act. He lived afterwards in London, where he contracted 
a great intimacy with Baxter, whose ' History of his Own Life and 
Times' Mr. Sylvester published after Baxter's decease. 

f A sister, or sister-in-law, of the second wife of Mr. Angier of 
Denton. 



194 



THE LIFE OF 



spent two days with his brother Okey # , and preached 
there ; visited his brother Crompton at Brightmet-hill ; 
kept a private fast at William Crompton's at Darcy 
Lever, and on Friday returned to Coley, leaving his wife 
in Lancashire ; but returned the Monday after, and on the 
25th of July he brought her into Yorkshire, some friends 
accompanying them as far as Middleton, and others 
meeting them at the inn at Littleborough. 

In the month of August they visited together the 
families with whom Mr. Heywood was intimate in the 
neighbourhood of Peniston, and also others who lived in 
the direction of Leeds. 

* For this person there is, or at least lately was, a singular and 
not very well conceived epitaph in the church-yard of Bolton, which 
has been so often printed, that I content myself with this general 
notice of it. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 195 

CHAPTER X. 
1667—1672. 

REASONS FOR THE PENAL LAWS BEING NOT ENFORCED WITH MORE 

SEVERITY. DISPOSITION TOWARDS NON-CONFORMISTS OF THREE 

NORTHERN LIEUTENANTS, THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, THE EARL 

OF DERBY AND THE EARL OF DEVONSHIRE. ANECDOTES. CHANGE 

OF THE MINISTRY. ATTEMPT AT A COMPREHENSION OF THE PRES- 
BYTERIANS AND A TOLERATION OF THE INDEPENDENTS. FAILS. 

THINGS REMAIN AS THEY WERE, AND MR. HEYWOOD PURSUES THE 
SAME COURSE.— STATE OF SOCIETY AT BINGLEY. VARIOUS JOUR- 
NEYS OF MR. HEYWOOD. DEATHS OF SEVERAL NON-CONFORMING 

MINISTERS. PUBLISHES HIS HEART-TREASURE. APPEARS AGAIN 

IN HIS OLD CHAPEL AT COLEY. LADY HOYLE. OTHER JOURNEYS. 

PUBLISHES HIS CLOSET-PRAYER. THE TWO ROOTS. PUBLISHES 

HIS SURE MERCIES OF DAVID. MR. HEYWOOD IMPRISONED AT 

LEEDS. DISTRAINT UPON HIS GOODS. PURCHASES LAND. THE 

HUTTONS. OATES'. DEATH OF MRS. HORTON. WITCHCRAFT. 

SUMMARY OF MR. HEYWOOD's LABOURS. 

We are now arrived at the autumn of 1667. We have 
seen the bold manner in which Mr. Heywood proceeded 
to act in defiance of the law, and how little molested he 
really was ; alarmed, indeed, at times, but neither fined, 
imprisoned, nor even taken before the magistrates. We 
have also seen incidentally that the provisions of the 
Conventicle Act and those of the Oxford or Five Mile 
Act were as much disregarded by his brother at Orms- 
kirk, and his father-in-law at Denton, as well as by 
other ministers, but few of whom suffered the penalties 
denounced, in comparison with those who escaped. 

The explanation of this anomalous state of affairs is 
to be found, in part, in the unwillingness, so natural to 
the noble mind of the better class of Englishmen, to 

o 2 



196 



THE LIFE OF 



put in force the provisions of Acts which press severely 
against any body of men where the guilt is purely 
technical and legal, and the conduct, were there no law 
touching the case, unequivocally meritorious. The policy 
of the Earl of Clarendon was not adopted without strong 
opposition, and, amongst others, the three lords who 
were the Lieutenants of the counties of York, Lancaster 
and Derby were not men who were disposed to lend 
their aid to the strengthening of the Church by the 
persecution of either Non-Conformists or Papists. In 
Derbyshire, the Earl of Devonshire was an enemy to all 
tyrannical measures, as the house of Cavendish has ever 
been # . In Lancashire, the Earl of Derby, though the 
son of James, the Earl who had been put to death in 
the days of Puritan ascendency, showed no particular 
affection for the Church as then restored f ; and in York- 

* Thomas Stanley, who had been ejected at Eyam in that county, 
continued with his people, and joined Mr. Mompesson, who had 
succeeded him in that place, in ministering to them when the village 
was desolated by the Plague in 1666. Bagshaw, the author of a 
very pleasing little volume, entitled De Spiritualibus Pecci, or Notes 
of the Works of God, and of those who have been Workers with God 
in the Peak of Derbyshire (8vo, 1702), thus speaks of the Earl of 
Devonshire having thrown his protection over him : — " When some 
who might have been better employed moved the then noble Earl 
of Devonshire, Lord- Lieutenant, to remove him out of the town, I 
am told, by the credible, that he said, ' It is more reasonable that 
the whole country should, in more than words, testify their thank- 
fulness to him, who, together with his care of the town, had taken 
such care as no one else did to prevent the infection of the towns 
adjacent.' " (p. 64.) 

f I find the three following anecdotes of the Earl of Derby in a ma- 
nuscript in the hand- writing of Mr. Newcome of Manchester, con- 
taining notes of his correspondence and of some of the occurrences 
of his time : — Sir Roger Bradshaigh, a great enemy of the Puritans, 
complained to the Earl of conventicles held at Toxteth-park and 
St. Helen's, and of the Earl's remissness in not suppressing them, 
seeing they were so near his seat at Know T sley ; when the Earl told 
him, that if he took up these, he should take up all, meaning the 
Papists. Another story is this ; and is perhaps scarcely credible in 
the form in which it is told. The Bishop of Chester preached at 
Knowsley ; his subject was the observance of Sunday ; he was en- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



197 



shire, that influential office was held by the Duke of 
Buckingham, who had married the daughter of Lord 
Fairfax, the Parliament's General, and who was an enemy 
to the policy of Lord Clarendon, if not from any better 
principle, yet from the desire of supplanting him in the 
king's favour and effecting a total change of the mi- 
nistry*. These political intrigues were also favourable to 

tertained at the earl's house, who, to put an affront upon him, after 
dinner called for tables to play with Sir Roger Bradshaigh. The bishop 
was offended, and left Knowsley sooner than he intended. The Rector 
of Walton, who was a Hey wood of Hey wood, on one occasion en- 
treated the earl to interfere to put down the conventicle at Tox- 
teth-park. The earl asked him, What the people did when they met ? 
The rector replied, they preached and prayed : "If that be all," re- 
plied the earl, " why should they be restrained ? Will you neither 
preach nor pray yourselves, nor suffer others to preach and pray ?" 

Mr. Hey wood notices his death thus : — " The Earl of Derby is 
lately dead, Lord Charles, having endured a long pining disease. 
His body was opened, and the physician found not one drop of 
blood in all his body, except a drop or two at his heart. He died this 
December ultimo, 1672. It calls to my thoughts his commanding 
Mr. Christian to be shot to death in the Isle of Man, upon his 
mother's instigation, for delivering up the castle there to the Parlia- 
ment upon terms, many years before, in the war. But this was upon 
the king's coming in, for which his Majesty frowned on him. Chris- 
tian's blood shed, left no blood in noble blood. There 's a loss of 
him in Lancashire, as being the great bulwark against Papists." 

* The Duke of Buckingham was the second Villiers who bore 
that title. His strange inconsistent character is known to every 
one. He had a Non- Conforming minister for his chaplain, and when 
the Lady Fairfax, his mother-in-law, died, he proposed that her 
funeral sermon should be preached publicly by this Non- Conformist. 
The archbishop interposed, and the duke sent him a scornful mes- 
sage by his secretary. When there was an intention among the 
clergy of York to obtain sentences of excommunication against all 
who did not receive the sacrament at Easter, the duke waited in 
person on the archbishop at Bishopsthorpe, to induce him to stay 
the proceedings. Another thing told of him is, that when Morley, 
Bishop of Winchester, urged in the king's presence the necessity 
of putting down conventicles, as if they were not put down the 
churches would be deserted, the duke remarked to him in rougher 
terms than I choose to print, " You should preach better and live 
better, and then your congregations would be as full as theirs." In 
Mr. Newcome's MS. there is an account of his duel with the Earl of 
Shrewsbury, which happened at the very time when the measure for 



198 



THE LIFE OF 



the Non-Conformists. They ended in the disgrace and 
dismissal of the Earl of Clarendon in the autumn of this 
year, and in his place being filled by persons who had 
less defined projects in relation to Church-affairs, or 
who sought the accomplishment of their purposes with 
less decided efforts. 

Two other circumstances were also favourable at this 
period to the Non -Conformists. One was the personal 
conduct of the king, by which the moral sense and the 
piety of the nation could not but be greatly shocked 
and offended. How far the clergy about the court, or 
the Conforming clergy at large, may have been justly 
chargeable with not having raised the warning voice and 
asserted the universal obligations of Christianity, we are 
perhaps, at this distance of time, not well able to judge ; 
or whether the ministers of the Church as established 
were as zealous in the more important duties of their 
office, as such times demanded, when the ancient sobriety 
and respectability of the English gentry were changing 
to habits too nearly resembling those of the court (of 
which there were too many examples in the county in 
which Mr. Heywood resided) ; but, under such circum- 
stances, the moral sense, the religion and the piety of 
the nation would not really disapprove the conduct of 
men who spoke Christian truths with Christian bold- 
ness, even though they might lament that this was done 
at the expense of that Christian union and order which 
it is so desirable to maintain, and of that respect for law 
which it is so dangerous to violate. 

comprehension of this year was in progress. The earl was slain. 
The event appears to have wrought very strongly on the duke's 
mind, if the following report was true, which occurs in a letter writ- 
ten in the month of March : — " The Duke of Buckingham is become 
a most eminent convert from all the vanities he hath been reported 
to have been addicted to ; hath had a solemn day of prayer for the 
completing and confirming the great work upon him. Dr. Owen 
and others of the like persuasion [Independents] were the carriers 
on of the work. He is said to keep correspondence with the chief of 
those parties. He grows more and more in favour and power." 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



199 



The other favourable circumstance was the occurrence 
at this period of two great calamities in the city of Lon- 
don. The conduct of the Non-Conforming ministers 
during the Plague had been so self-sacrificing, so honour- 
able to them, and useful, as to have won over many to a 
feeling of complacency towards them who did not con- 
cur with them in the duty of separation : — and when the 
churches were burnt in the fire, they who could convert, 
in a moment, a dwelling-house into a church, found 
themselves almost the only persons who could pour 
consolation into the hearts of an afflicted and grateful 
people. 

The Duke of Buckingham came into power towards 
the close of the year 1667, and one of the first measures 
of the new government was a scheme for toleration and 
comprehension, — that is, comprehension for the Presby- 
terians, and toleration for the Independents and other 
sectaries. The Lord Keeper Bridgeman was the person 
to whom the management of this affair was committed, 
and he entered into communication with Dr. Manton 
and Mr. Baxter, the heads of the Presbyterians. Terms 
were agreed upon, which Baxter says would have been 
satisfactory to fourteen hundred of the Non-Conforming 
ministers. What they were, may be seen in his Reliquice* , 
or in Dr. Calamy's ' Abridgementf Some of the diffi- 
culties were smoothed ; but the whole scheme was de- 
feated by a strong opposition to it of the greater part of 
the clergy. The bill was drawn by Chief Justice Hale, but 
before it could be introduced, a vote was passed in one or 
both of the Houses, " that no man should bring an Act 
of this nature into the House." So that things remained 
as they were, and the Conventicle Act, the term of which 
was near expiring, was renewed for a further period. 

Serious expectations were entertained by some per- 
sons that this plan of comprehension and toleration 
would have succeeded ; but others had no such expecta- 



* Part iii. p. 33. 



f p. 317. 



200 



THE LIFE OF 



tion, and it was supposed that the opposition of the 
Independents would of itself be fatal to it. On the 
4th of January, I find Mr. Henry Ashhurst writing 
to one of his Non-Conforming friends in Lancashire, 
Mr. Newcome of Manchester, "It is upon good grounds 
supposed that you must have your pulpits again but 
his correspondent took a juster view of the probable 
issue: — "When I hear such talk, I think of the story 
of Sancho the Third, King of Spain ; his elder brother's 
children were put beside the crown for their helpless 
infancy, and are kept out to this day ; but the daughter 
and heir of that line is now married into the family, 
which is now the Duke of Medina Celi, and every duke 
doth, in course, once in his time, formally petition the 
King of Spain for restoration to the crown. The king, in 
course, gives this answer, ' Mo est liger' [No es lugar], 
1 There is no room.' So our just liberty is talked of, by 
fits in course, and in course doft off with Mo est liger, 
There is no room. — God can dig the Rehoboth (Gene- 
sis xxvi. 22), and then we shall have room ; on him will 
we wait." 

On the 18th, Mr. Ashhurst writes: — "Mr. Baxter 
and Dr. Wilkins [afterwards Bishop of Chester, a great 
favourer of the measure] were with the Lord Keeper 
about the drawing of an Act of Comprehension. Mr. 
Baxter drew up a part of it. Liberty will be granted ; 
Now there is room ; because the necessities of the king's 
affairs enforce him to it. Mr. Baxter fears lest they con- 
trive some subtle words to entrap good people. Others 
say the assenting to the Thirty-Nine Articles shall be the 
qualification of a preaching minister, but there is nothing 
fully determined." And again, on the 25th : — " Liberty 
will stand or fall by the Parliament ; but the Speaker of 
the House of Commons, who is Episcopal, saith that it 
is fit to place you in your pulpits, because the Lord's 
hand hath appeared so against us, since your ejection. 
You see what God can do." And again, February 1 : — 
" There will certainly now be room, if the Independents 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



201 



do not frustrate our hopes, by rejecting that which the 
old Puritans would have leaped at ; they say they desire 
no more liberty." But on the 24th of March he wrote 
thus : — " I must now acquaint you with news as sad as 
true. After all our hopes the Parliament hath turned 
you all out of doors. On Wednesday last your business 
was debated, and referred until that day three weeks. 
Yesterday, unexpectedly, they debated the renewing the 
Act against Conventicles, when several Hot-spurs pleaded 
hard for the Lawn-sleeves, pretending such tumultuous 
meetings would end in rebellion, and forgot nothing that 
might incense the Moderates themselves, and at twelve 
o'clock it was ordered that three persons should draw 
up a new Bill against Conventicles, which will, it is 
thought, be more severe." 

The change of ministry did not, therefore, in effect do 
any thing to change the position of the Non -Conformists 
till some years after, when, as we shall see, indulgence 
was granted them by the king's own prerogative. 

Mr. Heywood's course remained the same after his 
marriage as before. He held what were termed Con- 
venticles in his own house, both on Sundays and on 
other days ; he frequently preached at the houses of the 
neighbouring gentry to whom his services were accepta- 
ble, and not unfrequently at the houses of other persons, 
inhabitants of the villages around him. He sometimes 
occupied the pulpits in the public chapels ; and he not 
unfrequently engaged in what may be called preaching- 
tours, going from one gentleman's house to another in 
places distant from Coley where the Puritan spirit prevailed. 

Tt will not be expected or desired that I should follow 
him from house to house, which it would be easy to do 
by the light which his diaries now afford, in which the 
business of each day is entered ; or that I should proceed 
to the same extent in my extracts from those diaries as 
in the notices before given of his proceedings at the be- 
ginning of his irregular ministrations. But I shall ex- 
tract sufficient to show his manner of life at this period, 



202 



THE LIFE OF 



which was the manner of life of many ministers beside 
himself ; his opinions ; the enlargement of the circle of 
his religious society ; the foundation of the Non-Con- 
formist congregations, which arose in a great measure 
in consequence of his exertions ; with passages occa- 
sionally introduced illustrative of the state of society in 
those times, or anecdotes preserved by him of occur- 
rences in the parts of the kingdom in which he lived. 

On Thursday, September 5, 1667, he went to Bing- 
ley, a town in the vale of the Aire on the edge of 
Craven. Mr. Bentley, who had found this an uncom- 
fortable place of residence, had not attempted to intro- 
duce Non-Conformist preaching ; and Mr. Heywood 
observes, that the first private meeting they had had was 
when he preached that night at Marley-hall, which had 
been a seat of a branch of the family of Savile, but was 
then in the hands of Joshua Walker, a tenant. Bingley 
was regarded by him as a place of great ignorance and 
profaneness, but he had a considerable auditory who 
were much affected # . 

* Bingley is one of several parishes in the West Riding of which 
no particular account has yet been published ; so that it is not easy to 
identify the persons, who were all of the better quality, intended by 
Mr. Heywood in the following passage, the value of which will be un- 
derstood whenever such history of the parish shall be undertaken : — 
" I being in Bingley parish, August 13, 1672, they were discoursing 
of the decay there was of persons of quality ; and I can say, since I 
knew that place, there is a decay of these houses and families ; — 
Mr. Savile of Marley, Mr. Frank of Cottingley, Mr. Birms of Rush- 
forth, Mr. Murgatroyd of Riddlesden, Mr. Murgatroyd of Greenhill, 
Mr. Currow of Nostrop, Mr. Johnson, and others. Some are in 
debt ; some imprisoned ; some rooted out, title, name ; some dead, 
posterity beggars. Oh ! what unthriftiness, wickedness, doth, and 
God's curse for the same. This is a good lesson : Prov. iii. 33. 
Zech. v. 4." Mr. Savile sold his land, "lived a sharking wandering 
life ; died at an ale-house near Elland, called Mother's-o'-th'-Cote, 
January 8, 1668." Mr. Binns, the owner of Rushforth-hall, was a 
justice of the peace and a great enemy of the Puritans in the three 
or four years that he lived after the Restoration. " He was a witty 
man. Left some three sons and as many daughters, and his estate 
encumbered with a debt of 2000/. The eldest son was improvident, 
spent apace ; borrowed 700/. of Mr. Benson, clerk of assize, who, to 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



203 



In the same month he was engaged in keeping a 
solemn fast at Robert Ramsden's of Park-nook, and 
another at his neighbour's, Captain Hodgson's, in which 
he was engaged from eight in the morning till two. 

On a visit to Lancashire in October he preached with 
Mr. Pendlebury in Ains worth, and again in the same 
township at the house of Mr. Strangeways with Mr. As- 
pinal, who had been ejected at Mattersey in Nottingham- 
shire *. He visited his brother at Ormskirk ; preached 
at Adam Ferniside's in Little Lever in company with 
Mr. Holme ; and again at Captain Seddon's. On his 

recover it, compelled him to sell his land, which he did to Mr. Bus- 
field of Leeds for 2900/., out of which, when Mr. Benson was paid, 
and the portions to the younger children, nothing remained for him. 
He became besotted." When the Non- Conformists were allowed 
to hold meetings in 1673 under licence from the king, Mr. Hey- 
wood obtained a licence for Rushforth-hall, of which Joshua Walker 
was the tenant under Mr. Busfield, who, however, soon compelled 
him to have the licence withdrawn. Of the owners of Riddlesden- 
hall, Mr. Hey wood's account is even less favourable. In the time 
of the war it was sold to Mr. James Murgatroyd by Mr. Rushworth, 
a man of indifferent character, who reserved a room for his own re- 
sidence, and as much corn and malt as would maintain him, but sold 
them also, and died miserably at Keighley. Of his two sons, the 
eldest, named John, died in York Castle, a prisoner for debt, and his 
younger son lived in an extremely poor condition at Riddlesden. 
The Murgatroyds were no better. John Murgatroyd succeeded his 
father ; he was a profane debauched person ; disinherited his eldest 
son, who married a daughter of Mr. Savile of Marley. The other 
four sons inherited the estate in quick succession, killing themselves 
by intemperance. When they were dead, the estate came to the 
eldest son, who enjoyed it five years, but was extravagant, and mort- 
gaged it. There are further notices of misconduct, extravagance, 
vice and imprisonment, and finally the sale of Riddlesden-hall, which 
Mr. Heywood says was a magnificent house, built new by Mr. James 
Murgatroyd, who was accounted worth 2000/. a-year. It became 
the property of Mr. Edmund Starkey. "That family, the Murgat- 
royds, is the most dreadful instance in the country ; all that know 
tell strange passages of them." 

* To the account of Mr. Aspinal given by Dr. Calamy, it may be 
added, that he married the widow of one of his parishioners, Gama- 
liel Lloyd, who died in 1 6 6 1 , leaving a large family of sons, whose pos- 
terity have been eminently successful at Manchester and elsewhere. 



204 



THE LIFE OF 



return home he preached at James Hardman's, near 
Hey wood-chapel, and at Chadwick-hall. 

In November he and Mr. Dawson went to Mr. Sharp's 
at Little B Horton to hold a private fast with Mr. Sale 
and Mr. Waterhouse " about a special business, and our 
judgment was desired in an intricate matrimonial case, 
which seems something dark." Interference on such 
occasions was not a very unfrequent occurrence in the 
practice of the Puritan ministry. 

On November 26 he notices the deaths of " two emi- 
nent servants of God, Mr. Hawksworth, minister for- 
merly at Hunslet, buried there yesterday, and Mr. Small- 
wood, formerly minister at Batley, buried this day. The 
former died at Alverthorpe-hall on Saturday afternoon, 
November 23, the latter at Flanshaw, November 24, on 
Lord's day in the afternoon ; not a quarter of a mile 
distance, and not a day betwixt their deaths." Dr. Ga- 
lamy gives an account of both these ministers. 

In December he ventured again to Leeds, where he 
preached in the houses of Joseph Jackson and Mr. Spen- 
cer. He preached also in the public chapels of Bramley 
and Bramhope to large auditories, repeating his sermon 
at Bramley at the house of Mr. Rawden. On the 20th 
he preached at the house of Mrs. Smallwood of Flan- 
shaw, and " on the day that they call Christmas day" at 
Bingley, when he preached again at Marley-hall and 
visited Mr. Robert Ferrand and his son, Mr. Benjamin 
Ferrand. 

Before closing the account of events of the year 1667, 
it must be mentioned that in this year was published his 
treatise entitled ' Heart-Treasure.' It is the substance 
of three discourses which he had preached at Coley from 
the words " A good man out of the good treasure of his 
heart bringeth forth good things," expanded into a work 
of 287 pages ; and he inscribes it from his study at Co- 
ley-hall, June 14, 1666, " To his very loving and dearly 
beloved friends and neighbours, the inhabitants of Coley 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



205 



and the places adjacent It is plain and practical, 
serious and useful ; with nothing extravagant or enthu- 
siastic, but full of excellent instruction for a religious 
life. The readiness, appositeness, and frequency of his 
quotations from the Fathers and Commentators is a re- 
markable feature, when we consider how little time his 
hurried life afforded him for reading and study. His 
mind appears also to have been full of the biography of 
religious persons, both Englishmen and foreigners. But 
nothing is more observable than the use which he makes 
of the Divine Poems of Herbert, and the taste which is 
shown in his selections from them. It was the first and 
best, and most popular of Mr. Heywood's printed wri- 
tings. Bagshaw, in his De Spiritualihus Pecci, says of 
it, that it is £< a treasure as well as of a treasure ;" and 
I find it in a list of books recommended to his wife by 
Gervase Disney, Esq., whose biographical confessions, 
published in 1692, form a very remarkable picture of the 
lay Puritan of the severer kind f in the first age after the 
Act of Uniformity. 

* The full title of his work is this : — Heart -Treasure, or an Essay 
tending to fill and furnish the head and heart of every Christian with 
a soul -enriching treasure of truths, graces, experiences, and comforts ; 
to help him in meditation, conference, religious performances, spiritual 
actions, enduring afflictions, and to fit him for all conditions ; that he 
may live holily, die happily, and go to heaven triumphantly. Being the 
substance of some sermons preached at Coley in Yoi^kshire on Matthew 
xii. 35. By 0. H., an unworthy minister of the Blessed Gospel. The 
book is now exceedingly rare. I have seen only one copy of it. 
There are other printed writings of Mr. Heywood of which I could 
never obtain the sight, and shall owe any account of them which 
may be given hereafter to the republication of them in 1825, and 
some following years, by Mr. Vint, who has rendered in more ways 
than one a good service to the public by his diligence in collecting 
them, and care in reprinting them. In the library of the British 
Museum, extensive as it is, but deplorably deficient in early English 
books, there are, I think, only three or four out of fifteen publica- 
tions of Mr. Heywood. 

t The passage is remarkable, as showing the books which had su- 
perseded the writings of Perkins, Bolton, Preston, and Sibbes, as the 
reading of the Puritans in 1685 : — " Be much in reading and study- 
ing good books ; these I commend to thee especially, viz. the Holy 



206 



THE LIFE OF 



1668. 

This year opens with a remarkable event, being no- 
thing less than the reappearance of Mr. Heywood in his 
old pulpit in Coley Chapel. "The next Lord's Day, 
being the first Sabbath in the new year, I preached at 
Coley Chapel in public. Mr. Hoole having given no- 
tice the day before that he would be absent, 1 took the 
advantage of the vacancy : we concluded of it but within 
the evening the night before, and the morning was ex- 
ceedingly windy, so that few could hear the bell ; but in 
the afternoon there was a very great assembly : — the Lord 
graciously assisted ; it was a good day ; and for the ef- 
fect of it, the will of the Lord be done." On the next 
Sunday he preached in another public chapel, that of 
Slaughthwaite on the borders of Yorkshire and Lanca- 
shire, " where he had kept many an exercise." He had 
a difficult and dangerous journey, "being waylaid with 
snow upon the hills." He lodged as usual, when visit- 
ing that wild and rough country, at the house of Robert 
Binns. When at home at this period he "preached 
thrice a week, according to his custom." On the 26th 
he preached at the public chapel at Bramley to " a nu- 
merous crowding congregation," though strongly dis- 
suaded from doing so by his friend, Elias Hinchball, 
because Mr. Hardcastle had been taken at a meeting at 

Bible with Pool's Annotations ; Swinnock's One Cast for Eternity ; 
Barret's Christian Temper ; Heywood's Heart-Treasure ; Rayner's 
Precepts ; Dunton's Heavenly Pastime ; Case's God's Waiting to be 
Gracious ; Flavel's Fountain of Life ; Bolton's Tost Ship ; R. Al- 
len's Rebuke to Backsliders ; Janeway's Heaven upon Earth ; Swin- 
nock's Regeneration ; Love on Heaven's Glory, &c. ; Flavel's Saint 
Indeed ; Steel of Uprightness ; Calamy's Godly Man's Ark ; Hook- 
er's Doubting Soul ; Hardcastle's Christian Geography ; Watson on 
Contentment ; Mede's Almost Christian ; Doolittle on the Sacra- 
ment ; his Call to Delaying Sinners ; most of Bunyan's Works, 
very useful if read without prejudice. These books, amongst others, 
I have had much refreshment from, and heartily commend them to 
thee." — p. 124. Habent sua fata libelli ! Verily this worthy 
esquire's taste is less conspicuous than his piety. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 207 

Leeds the Thursday before. The next day he preached 
at Edward Wildman's at Holbeck, close to the corpo- 
rate town of Leeds, and was hardly to be persuaded not 
to enter Leeds itself and preach there. But on his 
friends telling him that a constable was actually on the 
watch for him, he desisted and went to Beeston, and so 
to Morley, where he preached at the house of Abraham 
Dawson to a large company who were quickly assem- 
bled. From thence he passed to Wakefield " to visit 
Mr. Hardcastle in the House of Correction, sent thither 
from Leeds for having a conventicle there : on Friday I 
dined with him in his reproachful prison, and we had 
much intercourse together." 

On the 9th of February he preached at another public 
chapel, namely, that at Idle in the parish of Calverley, 
where he had a very numerous congregation. The place 
was then without a regular minister. He went also to 
Peniston, where he preached in the church, and "went 
to visit old Mr. Spawford at Mr. Cotton's house. " Mr. 
Spawford had been many years the minister in the church 
of Silkston, the mother of the Staincross churches, and 
even of the church of Mottram in Longdendale, in the 
tongue of Cheshire land interposing between Yorkshire 
and Lancashire, but doubtless, from the circumstance 
just named, in remote times a part of Yorkshire. Mr. 
Spawford was then eighty, and he died in the course of 
the year. In this journey Mr. Heywood also preached 
at Wakefield, visited Lady Hoyle* on his way to Leeds, 

* Lady Hoyle was the widow of Alderman Thomas Hoyle of York, 
whose unhappy end was made the subject of scoffing by the scurri- 
lous writers of the time. It is thus spoken of by John Shaw, the 
ejected minister of Hull, in the memoirs which he left of his own 
life : — " On which day, the year following, namely, January 30, 
1649-50, and about the same hour of the day that the king suffered, 
Mr. Thomas Hoyle, alderman of York, and burgess in the Parliament 
for York, hanged himself in his chamber at Westminster. He was 
well known to me, and my daughter Emote lived in his family at 
York. He was generally accounted a very good man ; but before 
his death he grew excessively melancholy, as his lady is at this pre- 
sent. It was commonly reported that he was one of those that 



208 



THE LIFE OF 



and there he was received by Mr. Hickson, but does not 
state that he preached. But in March he preached twice 
at Leeds, where I own I meet with him with less satis- 
faction than at other places, because other places were 
scenes of less danger, and did not require his services 
less than Leeds. On his way to Leeds he met Mrs. Mil- 
ner, of Pudsey, at Ellis Bury's, where he preached with 
special reference to her troubled condition. In this 
journey also he preached at Gildersome. 

The anniversary of the day of the ministers' banish- 
ment from their homes, March 25, was observed by 
some of them in the same manner as the greater day of 
Saint Bartholomew when the provisions of the Act of 
Uniformity came into force. The fast in this year was 
kept at Richard Robinson's. In the next event he seems 
to have yielded a little, though but a little, to the oppo- 
sition made to him. " On Lord's Day, March 29, I 
spent the Sabbath at James Brooksbank's, being per- 
suaded to it because of a proclamation the day before at 
Halifax against conventicles ; but at four o'clock at 
night I preached at home, and had a full auditory." It 
is clear that he had been uneasy in mind while at the 
house of his more cautious friend. 

Religious conferences were amongst the exercises of 
the Puritans of these times. Mr. Heywood was present 

passed sentence of death against the king in the High Court the 
year before ; but it was a clear mistake or slander, for he was then 
neither in the court nor near the city at the time." — Memoirs of the 
Life of John Shaw, some time vicar of Rotherham, printed as a pri- 
vate work by John Broadley, Esq., from the manuscript copy in the 
Museum, 12mo, Hull, 1824, p. 63. In The Antiquities of York City, 
8vo, 1719, it is said that " he was found dead by his lady, she having 
been abroad that morning," p. 111. When Mr. Heywood visited 
her she was living at the house of Mr. George Foster at Thwaites, 
near Leeds, who managed her affairs, she being <f under sore afflic- 
tion of spirit by desertion and melancholy several years." He 
preached and prayed in her chamber. Mr. Heywood visited her 
again in July, in which month she died, and was buried at Sandal 
on the 24th. Mr. Heywood says that before her death she gave 
them a sign by lifting up her hands that God was returned. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



209 



at one which was held at Denton-hall, then the residence 
of Mrs. Arderne. Mr. Martindale was there, and both 
he and Mr. Heywood spoke extemporarily on the re- 
deeming of time. 

On the 8th of April he kept a private fast at Man- 
chester with Mr. Newcome, and Mr. Goodwin who had 
been ejected at Bolton, of whom Calamy says, that after 
his ejectment he lived at Manchester, where he studied 
chemistry and was a great proficient. " God wonder- 
fully helped : I hear since it was the day appointed for 
the Parliament debating the business of Non-Conform- 
ists' liberty, and it is a token for good." He went to 
Oldham to visit the family of Mr. Hopwood under great 
affliction ; preached at his cousin Judith Heaward's house 
at Hollinwood, and at the public chapel in Ainsworth, 
where he had a large congregation and no interruption, 
though the high sheriff, Mr. Greenhalgh of Bran die- 
some, and his father-in-law, Dr. Bridgeman, dean of 
Chester, were within two miles. He preached again at 
the chapel on the succeeding Sunday, and in the evening 
at James Pilkington's. He preached also at the house 
of James Hardman, at Broadfield, near Heywood Cha- 
pel. 

In May he visited Rawden, and preached to a consi- 
derable number. " Though the old gentleman be dead, 
yet we are sweetly entertained : he died April 25 ; was 
near eighty-six years of age." He then went to Bram- 
hope and Arthington. At the latter place he visited an 
afflicted gentlewoman, Mrs. Arthington, "who is my Lord 
Fairfax's sister." Preaching the next night at William 
Thomson's, near Kirkstall Abbey, Mr. Foxcroft, a justice 
of the peace and alderman of Leeds, interrupted them. 
Mr. Heywood was conveyed out by a back way, and it 
does not appear that any of the persons present were 
fined. Notwithstanding he went into Leeds, preached, 
and walked about the streets as if it were not a prohi- 
bited place ; visited Mr. Hardcastle, then in prison there ; 
and this though, on May 31, Mr. Hancock, for preach- 

p 



210 



THE LIFE OF 



ing at Alverthorpe, was committed to the castle of York 
by Mr. Copley of Batley. On the same day, Mr. Hey- 
wood was preaching in his own house to a large auditory. 

In July he was at Knaresborough with Mr. Nathaniel 
Hey wood, when he visited Mr. William Kitchen at Ri- 
pon, who had lately married a daughter of Captain 
Hodgson. He visited also Mr. Cholmley of Braham, 
a gentleman of fortune and ancient family. He went 
again to Leeds, where he preached at the dedication of a 
new house, built by R. H. (Robert Hickson.) 

In August he visited Mr. Dyneley at Flanshaw-hall, 
son to Mr. Dyneley of Bramhope ; was at Wakefield and 
Leeds, and extended his journey to York, another pro- 
hibited place. He found Mr. Rider there, and preached 
frequently. On the 30th he preached all day at the 
chapel at Idle. 

In September he visited his friends in Lancashire, 
preached at Gorton Chapel and elsewhere ; went on to 
Chester, another prohibited place, where he preached at 
his cousin Bullen's and Mr. Greg's ; went to Tarvin, 
and preached there at his cousin Nathaniel Greg's, and 
to Warrington, where he preached at Mr. Samuel Lied- 
ger's. He preached at Shaw Chapel on his return. 

" November 3, having been two Lord's Days at home, 
I went to Houghton to my Lady Rodes', where we had 
a solemn fast on Wednesday ; Mr. Clayton, of Rother- 
ham, and I preached and prayed, and Mr. Kirby closed 
the work with prayer. The day after, being the 5th of 
November, my lady prevailed with us to stay and spend 
some time in thankfulness. Mr. Grant began, and I 
preached and prayed, and Mr. Kirby concluded^." 

November 1 1 , there was a conference at Mr. Hey- 
wood's, the subject being Original sin. 

In this year he published his second work, entitled 
4 Closet-Prayer a Christian Duty.' It is a long and ex- 
cellent discourse on Matthew vi. 6. 

* Lady Rodes was the widow of Sir Edward Rodes, who died 
February 19, 1666, and daughter of Sir Hammond Whichcote. 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



211 



1669. 

Cl This day, being January 29, we have been interring 
the corpses of old Mr. Hill and his wife. He was aged 
eighty years within a few weeks ; she near as old. They 
had lived many years together. He died on Wednesday, 
betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock. She died at three 
o'clock the same day. Seven Non-Conformist ministers 
laid him in the grave." This was Mr. Edward Hill, 
formerly of Christ's College, Cambridge, who had been 
ejected at Crofton, near Wakefield. On the Five Mile 
Act he settled himself at Shibden, near Mr. Hey wood's 
residence. 

March 28, he preached at Hunslet Chapel to a very 
large congregation. 

In April, being in Lancashire, he preached the funeral 
sermons of Mr. Park, and of his uncle Francis Critchlaw, 
at Bradshaw Chapel. 

He notices the death of Mr. Elkana Wales, who died 
at Mr. Hickson's at Leeds on May 1 1 ; the fourth death 
in the Yorkshire Non-Conforming ministers of Mr. Hey- 
wood's neighbourhood. 

January 26, he preached at Morley in the chapel, and 
when he was in the pulpit, while a psalm was singing, 
Mr. Broadhead, vicar of Batley, Morley being a member 
of that parish, " comes up tossing among the crowd up 
the alley, and got with much ado to the clerk ; bade him 
tell Mr. Heywood to come down and let him have his 
own pulpit, and then hasted away to Batley ; told Jus- 
tice Copley what a multitude of people there were at 
Morley hearing a Non-Conformist : he took no notice 
of it ; bade let us alone ; and so through God's mercy 
we enjoyed the day quietly." He visited Mr. Marshal, 
the minister, and lodged at Hague-hall. 

July 4, he preached again at his old chapel of Coley ; 
and again on September 19, Mr. Hoole being absent. 

July 7, the shock of an earthquake was distinctly felt. 
It was felt also at Bradford, Idle, and as far as Ripon*. 
* It was observed also in Lancashire and about London, 
p 2 



212 



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He visited Alderman He wet and his wife at Wakefield, 
and Timothy Smith at Leeds, where he met Mr. Ming- 
worth, another Non-Conformist divine. He kept a fast 
in company with Mr. Nesse, a minister of Congregational 
sentiments, at Leeds. 

August, preached again at Lady Rodes' ; lodged at 
John Scurr's at Hague-hall. 

October 28, another Yorkshire Non-Conforming mi- 
nister was buried, the elder Mr. Root, who was interred 
at Sowerby with much solemnity*. 

November j he is preaching at Leeds and in the neigh- 
bourhood. At Leeds his friends who entertain him are 
J. Cummins, Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Paul Thoresby, an 

* The account of this Mr. Root, given by Dr. Calamy, being de- 
fective in many points, I shall take the present opportunity of making 
some additions. He was born about 1590, educated in Magdalene 
College, Oxford, and travelled much abroad in his younger days. 
Dr. Calamy then skips over the events of his life till the year 1645, 
when he was pastor of an Independent church at Sowerby, where he 
was living when the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662. But it 
appears by Mr. Hey wood's Life of Angler, that in 1632 there was a 
design of placing him in the chapel of Denton, which was favoured 
by the two Hydes of Norbury and Denton, but opposed by another 
considerable person there, Mr. Holland of Denton. This was when 
Mr. Broxholme was silenced, and Mr. Angier was chosen. He ob- 
tained, however, a settlement in the same parish of Manchester, be- 
coming minister of the chapel at Gorton; and we find him in 1634 
baptizing the daughter of Mr. Angier, who became the wife of Mr. 
Heywood, and joining with Mr. Horrocks in preaching sermons on 
the day of Mr. Angier's second marriage to Mrs. Margaret Moseley 
in 1643. In that year he was placed in the church of Halifax, and 
in or about 1646 he retired from Halifax and settled at Sowerby. 
In 1646 he engaged in the Lancashire controversy between the Pres- 
byterians and Independents, the title of his tract being A just apology 
for the Church of Duckenfield. After the Uniformity Act, Mr. 
Root continued among his people at Sowerby, but he was harshly 
treated, being sent to the castle at York for very trifling infringement 
of the law in respect of ecclesiastical affairs. His son, Timothy Root, 
was also an ejected minister, being settled at Sowerby-bridge Chapel 
when the Act took place. He continued a Non- Conformist for many 
years, partaking largely of the hardships of the time ; but at length, 
as late as 1685, he conformed, and had the rectory of Howden. But 
he lived not long, dying at Beverley in 1687. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



213 



alderman, great-uncle to Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary 
of Leeds. 

1670. 

January, preaching at Honley ; and at Hulme, at the 
house of Mr. Earnshaw. 

At length the magistracy interfere : — " Upon Satur- 
day, March 12, I went to Bramhope ; preached there 
upon the Lord's day. Monday night went to George 
..... 's house at Little Woodhouse ; there preached ; 
and before I had done was apprehended by constables ; 
carried to the mayor*', who put me to the common pri- 
son, called Capon-hall or Cappon-callf ; by the mediation 
of friends was released on Tuesday, this March 15, the 
same day forty years after I was baptized." Mr. Hey- 
wood designed to write a fuller account of this affair, 
but I have not seen it J. When at liberty he began 
again to preach even in the same parish of Leeds. " I 
preached on Wednesday night at Joseph Wood's, near 
Bramley ; came home on Thursday. Blessed be God 
for this journey." — " On Friday, March 25, we had a 
private day at Mr. Dawson's." On the 27th he preached 
in public all day at Idle, where he was entertained at 
Thomas Ledger's. He also went to Horsford, where he 
preached at the house of John Clarkson. 

New names of friends now appear : — "Went on Mon- 
day to visit Mr. Thorpe ; Josiah Oates, not being well ; 
William Heaward at Wakefield, after the death of his 
good wife ; went back to Flanshaw, where I had ap- 

* The mayor of Leeds, then Godfrey Lawson, Esq. 

t The name of the prison is written plainly in Mr. Hey wood's MS., 
but it does not occur in Thoresby's Survey of the town. 

X In the account of Mr. Heywood in Dr. Calamy's work, com- 
municated probably by Mr. Heywood himself, it is said " the mayor 
treated him like a fury. He asked whether he had not been once 
in their hands already. Mr. Heywood answered with some address, 
that he was never in prison, but once for the king in Sir George 
Booth's rising. 



214 



THE LIFE OF 



pointed to meet old Mr. Dyneley at his son's ; lodged 
there : on Tuesday, after dinner, went to Healy, where 
T preached at widow Heaton's to a considerable num- 
ber." 

In May he preached at the chapel at Coley. In the 
midst of the sermon in the afternoon Stephen Ellis came 
in with the churchwardens and took down the names of 
divers persons whom they found there, Mr. Hey wood 
still continuing the service. 

In June he visited Mr. Dyneley at Bramhope, Ar- 
thington, Rawden, where now lived Mr. Coates, the 
ejected minister, whom he had before visited at his 
house at Wath, near Rotherham # , but who had now 
become resident on his own lands at Rawden, where he 
was born. 

July 3, he preached all day in the church of Peniston. 
On Monday he dined with Mr. Nailor at Ecclands, and 
lodged at Mr. Riche's of Bull- house f, 

July 10, he preached three times at home, and next 
morning he found himself again under the animadver- 
sion of the magistracy. " The churchwardens and over- 
seer came to this house ; told Captain Hodgson they had 
a warrant on Sabbath-day night from two justices, Mr. 
White | and Mr. Copley §, to make distress upon my 
goods for ten pounds ; and because of my poverty to lay 
it upon other two men, Richard Kershaw and William 
Pollard of Wyke, five pounds a-piece, for being at that 

* See Calamy, Account, p. 530, for this Mr. Samuel Coates, who 
was ejected at West Bridgeford in Nottinghamshire. His daughter 
married one of the Bagshaws in Derbyshire. 

t Sylvanus Riche, the son of Captain William Riche, who had a 
commission under Fairfax. He had married one of the family of 
Wordsworth of Waterhall. The family became extinct in 1769 by 
the death of his grandson, Aymer Riche, Esq. They founded the 
dissenting chapel at Bull-house. 

X Francis Whyte, Esq., the recorder of Leeds and Pontefract, 
grandson of Dr. Francis Whyte, bishop of Ely. 

§ Edward Copley of Batley, whose name has occurred before. 
He was grandson of John Lord Savile of Howley. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



215 



conventicle at Coley Chapel when I preached there. 
These officers wanted Mr. Hodgson's assistance, being 
an overseer. On Tuesday morning they came and 
showed me the warrant ; demanded ten pounds ; told 
me it was best to pay, since money cannot be under- 
valued, but goods may. Upon my refusal they came on 
Wednesday morning, that is, James Mitchel of Crow- 
nest, constable, Thomas Hanson of Mitham, church- 
warden, Samuel Wadington of Norwood-green, overseer, 
and brought three men with them to take down and help 
to hurry out my goods. They swept all away ; three 
good chests, three tables, chairs, stools, my bed, bed- 
ding, curtains — all my goods, except a cupboard and 
some chairs, are gone. They carried them to John 
Appleyard's at Shut ; appointed R. Langley and Nich. 
Empsal to prize them ; they rated them, together with 
ten books, to ten pounds and a noble ; cheap penni- 
worths ! All this was on Wednesday, July 13, 1670. 
Blessed be God ! In the afternoon I preached on the 
text, Heb. x. 34 # . On Friday I preached again on the 
same text, and on Saturday went into Lancashire f ." 

This distraint was made under the new Act against 
Conventicles, 22 Charles II. ch. 1, which came into 
force on May 10, 1670. 

July 23. "I went to Pool ; preached in a chapel 
there on Lord's Day peaceably : blessed be God that a 
new unheard-of door is open for God's people." Au- 
gust 6, he preached at Shadwell in the midst of dangers 
and alarms ; went to Leeds, where this time he was not 
invited to preach. August 21, he preached again at 
Pool, and afterwards visited Mr. Dyneley. The 24th 
was observed as a fast in his own house. 

"August 28, the younger Mr. Root preached at Shad- 

* " Ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the 
spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven 
a better and an enduring substance." 

f See more of the details of this seizure in Mr. Slate's ' Life of 
Mr. Heywood.'— Whole Works, i. 147—150. 



216 



THE LIFE OF 



well, when Lord Savile*, Mr. Copley, Mr. Hammond, 
and forty of Lord Freschvile's troopers from York came, 
took Mr. Root, carried him to York, and put him in 
the castle ; took four hundred or five hundred names of 
people, seized on their horses, made them pay five shil- 
lings a-piece before they had them. I was earnestly 
desired to have been there that day. He was kept close 
prisoner ; put into the low gaol among twelve thieves ; 
had double irons laid on him for four days and nights ; 
but on Captain Hodgson's importunity with Mr. Copley 
was released." On October 4 Mr. Hey wood went to 
Slaughthwaite to help Mr. Root in a day of thanks- 
giving for his deliverance out of prison, " and God was 
seen on that day." Captain Hodgson accompanied him. 

I am unwilling to omit what I find in the diary under 
December 15 : — " I was wanted at home, for Richard 
Langley's eldest son John was fallen suddenly sick. I 
went to visit him on Thursday in the afternoon, but he 
was not sensible. I saw he was gone : he died on Tues- 
day evening, December 15. The night before he died, 
I being with him, there was a candle standing on the 
cupboard, a great one, none near it, which I observed 
did swaile up in a blue blaze several times, and then 
went out of itself ; and though I think none but myself 
observed the manner of its expiring, yet all smelt the 
snuff. I thought it strange, and looked upon it as an 
emblem and presage of death." I leave it without com- 
ment, as a singular accident resting on credible evidence, 
and the more singular as being coincident in time with 
so important a family event. 

In this year he found time in the midst of his labours 
to prepare a second part of his ' Heart's Treasure.' This 
he entitles ' The Sure Mercies of David,' it being in fact 
a sermon, much enlarged, we may believe, on the text, 
Isaiah Iv. 3. 

* It is not clear which member of the family of Savile is intended 
by Mr. Hey wood ; nor does it appear that there was at that period, 
3 670, any one who would be properly described as "Lord Savile." 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



217 



1671. 

Early in this year we find Mr. Heywood in a part of 
Lancashire which he does not appear to have visited 
before. It was Mr. Jollie's district, the parts about 
Clitheroe, his house being situated on the north side of 
Pendle-hill. It was an exchange ; Mr. Jollie came to 
Coley, and Mr. Heywood went to his people. On March 
12, he had appointed to preach at Woodhead-chapel, in 
one of the passes of the mountains which separate Lan- 
cashire and Yorkshire ; but it was a terrible storm of 
snow, making the moors impassable, so he remained at 
Hulme, and preached at Mr. Earnshaw's. On Monday 
night he preached again at Mr. Earnshaw's, and the 
same night, after nine o'clock, he rode three miles and 
preached again at Godfrey Armitage's at Lidget, in 
Kirk-Burton parish. In the same month he preached 
at Heckmondwike. 

In April we find him buying land. None of Mr. Hey- 
wood 's accounts of receipt and expenditure have been 
preserved ; but it is evident that he cannot have lived 
all these years, conducting these frequent religious ser- 
vices, without gratuities from those who benefited by 
them. It is true, not many great, not many noble, were 
called ; but he cannot have visited such families as the 
Fairfaxes, Arthingtons, Dyneleys, Rawdens, Rodes', or 
the Sotwells, Cottons, Wordsworths and Riches, without 
receiving from them gratuities which would bear some 
proportion not only to their estimate of the value of his 
very acceptable services, but also to their sense of the 
sacrifices which he had made in what they deemed a just 
and holy cause. His other friends were, for the most part, 
the lesser gentry, or the better kind of yeomanry, — men 
whose names are not perhaps in the heralds' books, 
but men of substantial property, and whose sober and 
religious habits of life gave them the better power of 
being liberal and generous with their less affluent means. 
However, certain it is, that in the year of which we are 



218 



THE LIFE OF 



speaking, he added to his estate at Little Lever by a pur- 
chase of land adjoining to it. "I must confess 'tis 
strange I should buy land in such a day as this ; but 
my case is almost like the prophet's, I was necessitated 
to buy it, and that God that cast it unsought-for on me 
can tell how to see it is discharged, though I had never 
so much money together in all my life. Jeremiah xxxii. 
7, 8—12." 

It now appears that Mr. Heywood's goods which had 
been taken under the distress had found no purchasers 
near his residence. They remained in a neighbouring 
barn ; from whence, on June 6, they were taken away 
by Robert Reiner, a bailiff of Wakefield. 

On June 13, he preached again at John Armitage's 
at the Lidget to a great number. 

On June 16, he had a private day at Captain Hodg- 
son's, on his son, Timothy Hodgson, going to be chap- 
lain to Sir John Hewley at York. We shall hear of him 
again. He spent the greater part of his life in the family 
of Sir John and Lady Hewley*. 

August, he went to York in the assize-week ; preached 
twice at Lady Watson's on the Sunday, and heard a 
sermon twice in public. He frequently attended the ser- 
vices in the churches. He was at York five days, and 
preached frequently. He went to Mr. Hutton's at Pop- 
pletonf for a night. On his return visited Mr. Haw- 

* I need scarcely apprize the reader that this is the lady whose 
benefactions to the Non-Conforming ministry have been of late 
years the subject of so much litigation. 

t This family was closely connected with the heads of the Pres- 
byterian party in Yorkshire. Richard Hutton of Poppleton, grand- 
son of Archbishop Matthew Hutton, married one of the daughters of 
Ferdinando Lord Fairfax, and died in 1648 ; but the widow lived till 
1687. His sister was the wife of Edward Bowles, the Presbyterian 
minister at York, who did so much to facilitate the admission into 
that city of Monk and his army, in their march upon London, in 
1660. One of the sons married a daughter of Sir Edward Rodes 
of Great Houghton ; another, who settled at Pudsey, married one of 
the daughters of James Sale, the ejected minister; and his son 
married a daughter of Richard Thorpe, another of the ejected minis- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



219 



den at Sherburn, and Captain Drake at Pontefract, where 
he preached on the Sunday in a malt-house. The 24th 
of August he kept as a fast, " black Bartholomew Day." 
It was a private fast, none but the family being present. 
Each prayed in turn, he, the wife, the two sons and 
the maid, beginning with the youngest. 

Nov. 11, Saturday. " I and my wife weut to Hague- 
hall, where I preached on Lord's Day ; had a consider- 
able auditory. On Monday we went to Wakefield ; 
called at Alverthorpe ; lodged with Mr. Jonas Dickson. 
On Tuesday I visited friends in Wakefield ; went to 
Flanshaw, dined with Mr. Bodley and several friends ; 
lodged there with Mr. Dyneley ; called on Wednesday 
at Chickenley, at Mr. Josiah Oates' house # , and home 
that night." 

1672. 

At the beginning of this year he was again preaching 
at Joshua Walker's, near Bingley. He went to Ar thing- 
ton " to visit that good gentlewoman," Mrs. Arthington, 
then a widow ; kept a solemn day at Bramhope, where 
Mr. Root and he preached, and old Mr. Holdsworth 
" administered the Supper went to Leeds, preached at 
John Cummins' ; preached at the chapel at Bramley on 
the first Sunday in the new year. 

" On Lord's Day, January 14, I preached at home ; 
there was a great assembly, because none were at chapel. 

ters, both of whom are frequently mentioned in these pages. They 
were great benefactors to the chapel at Hopton. Mr. Holdsworth 
was ejected at Poppleton by the Act. 

# Chickenley is a hamlet in the parish of Dewsbury. This is the 
second time that we have found Mr. Heywood visiting at Mr. Oates', 
who was then a young man, having been born in 1643. The inti- 
macy thus begun continued through the remainder of Mr. Hey- 
wood's life. Mr. Oates sent one of his sons to Leeds, where he was 
a successful merchant, and died in 1729, " a great loss to his large 
family and to Mill- hill congregation," says a contemporary minister 
who knew him. Many of his posterity have resided at Leeds, and 
been supporters and ornaments of the Dissenting interest in that 
town. 



220 



THE LIFE OF 



About one o'clock tidings came that Stephen Ellis had 
got a warrant and was resolved to come to break us up, 
which occasioned me to break off and dismiss them ; 
the rest of the day Captain Hodgson and I spent in 
prayer." 

January 23. " I went to Heckmondwike, where I 
preached at Abraham Naylour's ; had a large assembly." 

February 6. "I went to the burial of Mrs. Horton # ; 
and on February 12 to the funeral of Richard Hoyle's 
fourth son, who had been all strangely taken with strange 
diseases ; pined away ; they have suspected some witch- 
craft f ; O that they saw the Lord's hand !" 

February 25. "I helped at a private fast at William 
Cordingley's'with old Mr. Holdsworth and his son J." 

* This lady was the owner of Coley-hall, where Mr. Heywood 
lived ; " a gentlewoman of 1000/. a-year; lived sparingly, and usually 
had but ordinary clothes. Many things considerable about her. 
Several of the servants were affrighted with a great knocking and 
variety of music the night before she died. We had a very great 
solemnity [at the funeral], multitudes of people. Dr. Hooke 
preached a fine flourishing flaunting sermon. I pray God it may do 
good. These scriptures were fresh in my thoughts, Psalm cxlix. 6, 
ad fin. Prov. xvi. 4." 

t The notices in Mr. Heywood's papers of this kind of delusion 
are not unfrequent. He relates of one Joseph Hinchlifle and his 
wife, that they were accused of this crime of witchcraft, and bound 
over to appear at the Assizes to answer the charge, but could not 
bear it, for on Thursday morning, February 4, 1675, he hanged him- 
self in a wood near his house, and was not found till the Sunday. In 
the mean time the wife died, praying for those that had falsely ac- 
cused her. We may admire the vigour of devotional and pious sen- 
timent, and respect a devoted reverence for every thing that appears 
to be countenanced by the language of the Scriptures, but we cannot 
but perceive how needful it is that these feelings should be chastised 
by a cool judgement and common sense. 

J Both the Holdsworths, who were ejected in Yorkshire, are no- 
ticed by Dr. Calamy, but he does not say that they were father and 
son. They were both named Josiah. The elder was born at Rip- 
ponden, in Halifax parish, was ejected at Poppleton, and died at 
Wakefield October 18, 1677, aged 75. The younger was ejected at 
Sutton, in the East Riding, became chaplain to Sir Richard Hogh- 
ton, but returned to Yorkshire, and in 1672 set up a meeting at 
Heckmondwike. He died in 1685, aged 50. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



221 



Many journeys he went of which I have taken no no- 
tice, as they were to visit parties who have heen already 
mentioned as having opened their doors to him, and 
listened to his instructive, awakening and often eloquent 
discourses, and joined with him in those devotional ex- 
ercises which must have been striking and affecting, as 
they could suspend in attention those who heard him for 
two or three hours without intermission. But I fear 
that I may have descended to too great minuteness of 
detail, and wearied the patience of many of my readers 
by this attempt to preserve and make known the names 
of those who were founders of Protestant Non-Con- 
formity, or, what is the same thing, Protestant Dissent, 
in the parts of the kingdom to which the labours of 
Mr. Heywood were principally applied. But, having* 
mentioned them once or twice, there will be the less 
necessity for introducing such details in the further pro- 
gress of this work. 

In a tabular synopsis which Mr. Heywood drew up 
of his ministerial labours, we find that in the seven years 
from 1666 to 1672 he preached 436 week-day sermons, 
kept 151 fasts, and thirty-eight days of thanksgiving; 
and travelled 5028 miles. Add to this his Sunday du- 
ties. When at home his time was passed in religious 
meditation, and in devotional exercises which were often 
as intense as those of which we read in the lives of the 
most holy of the hermits, or the most seraphic of the 
friars. 



222 



THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER XL 
1672. 

SUDDEN CHANGE IN THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY RESPECTING THE 

NON-CONFORMISTS. THE KING'S DECLARATION FOR INDULGENCE. 

DIFFICULTIES IN ACCEPTING THE LIBERTY. MODE OF PROCEDURE. 

ADDRESS FROM THE LANCASHIRE MINISTERS. DECLARATION OF 

A PORTION OF THE YORKSHIRE MINISTERS. FORM OF APPLICATION 

FOR LICENSES. MR. HEYWOOD's LICENSE. HIS REMOVAL TO HIS 

OWN HOUSE AT NORTH OWRAM. FITS UP THE LARGEST ROOM AS A 

PLACE FOR WORSHIP. FORMS HIS CONGREGATION IN CHURCH 

ORDER. MUTUAL PLEDGE AND DECLARATION. UNION WITH HIM 

OF MANY INDEPENDENTS. FOUNDATION OF THE CONGREGATION AT 

WARLEY. HIS TRAVELS DURING THIS SUMMER, AND THE RISE OF 

LICENSED MEETING-HOUSES IN VARIOUS PLACES. FOUNDATION OF 

AN ACADEMY FOR THE EDUCATION OF NON-CONFORMING MINISTERS. 
REVIVAL OF PRESBYTERIAN ORDINATION. 

The year 1672 is a very memorable one in the history 
of Protestant Non-Conformity. 

Early in the year a great and sudden change took 
place in the policy of the country. It was determined 
by the king's advisers that he should dispense with the 
penal laws against the Non-Conformists, and that the 
ministers should be allowed, on certain easy conditions, 
to conduct religious services in such manner and places 
as to them should seem meet. This was to be done by 
virtue of the king's prerogative, as supreme in eccle- 
siastical affairs, it being well known that Parliament 
would not have given its sanction to the measure, so 
great was the dread of an intention on the part of the 
king to introduce Popery, and so strong the persuasion 
of the importance of maintaining the Protestant Church 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



223 



of England in its full strength, as the great defence 
against such a design. 

The change was therefore announced by a Declaration 
issued on the king's sole authority. The Declaration 
was to the effect that " there was very little fruit of 
all those forcible courses and many frequent ways of 
coercion that had been used for reducing all erring and 
dissenting persons ; wherefore, by virtue of his supreme 
power in matters ecclesiastical, he suspends all penal 
laws about them, and offers to allow a convenient num- 
ber of public meeting-places to men of all sorts that did 
not conform, provided they took out licenses, set open 
the doors to all comers, and preached not seditiously 
nor against the discipline or government of the Church 
of England." This Declaration was published on the 
15th of March. 

It came upon persons in whose favour it was issued 
quite unexpectedly, and they at first scarcely knew how 
to receive it. No one could take the benefit of it with- 
out acknowledging the king's dispensing* power — a ha- 
zardous admission, and very incongruous with the part 
which they had taken in the preceding times. It cannot, 
indeed, be denied that the acceptance of the boon was 
in effect to admit the king's power to dispense with the 
operation of Acts of Parliament in which the national 
will was embodied, when they concerned in any way 
ecclesiastical affairs. This was a very dangerous admis- 
sion, since, though used now in their favour, it might 
hereafter be used for the purpose of bringing back Popery, 
to which the king was, on some good grounds, suspected 
to incline, as well as his brother. This disturbed the 
minds of some of the ministers of both denominations : 
but the Presbyterians were alarmed at the thought that it 
gave too much encouragement to the sectaries, and would 
thus tend to the injury of the church. Others of them 
feared the introduction by its means of heresies ; and all 
seem to have seen that its effect would be to place them 



224 



THE LIFE OF 



in the same position with the sectaries ; to force them, 
in fact, into that position, and so to reduce very greatly 
their chance of comprehension. 

The Independents could have nothing to object against 
it, except the point of prerogative and the possible 
facilities which it might make for the introduction of 
Popery ; and they went up first with an address, acknow- 
ledging the king's goodness and declaring their accept- 
ance of the favour. But the Presbyterians in London 
were not long after them. Both were very graciously 
received. Dr. Calamy says that the addresses were very 
cautiously worded. All was done within a fortnight of 
the appearance of the Declaration. 

The intelligence was soon conveyed into the country. 
On Monday, the 18th of March, Mr. Heywood was 
keeping a private fast at the house of John Smith in the 
parish of Bradford. He says that on that occasion he 
" prayed with more enlargedness than usual for the 
church, and for poor ministers, that their mouths might 
be opened ; when lo ! an answer ; for on the next morn- 
ing two messengers came to my house, one from Halifax, 
the other from Leeds, bringing the welcome intelli- 
gence." The texts, Ezra vii. 27, and Isaiah lxv. 24, came 
into his mind. 

I do not find in Mr. Heywood's papers much on this 
subject, except acknowledgment of the divine favour in 
having removed the impediments to the exercise of his 
ministry. Of the political considerations connected with 
the measure, he thought, it is probable, very little. His 
desire and design was to do God service in the zealous 
prosecution of his duties as a minister, and he thought 
of little else. Yet, even he was not fully satisfied ; and 
he writes thus : — " There is cause of grief that Papists 
and Atheists enjoy so much liberty ; but we have oppor- 
tunity of resistance ; we have liberty to do good, as they 
have to do hurt." 

The intelligence reached Manchester on the 18th. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



225 



One of the first thoughts which arose in the mind of 
Mr. Newcome was, the difficulty of reconciling the en- 
joyment of the new liberty proposed to them with the 
principle of adherence to a National Church. " Some 
of us," says he, " desirous to enjoy the benefit of it, and 
yet to retain our principles of anti-separation or any 
appearance of it, did agree to write a letter to Alderman 
Ashurst, to wait upon the bishop and to desire his 
advice and assistance in it, especially for the obtaining 
liberty for void chapels and churches where the incum- 
bents could give leave." This letter was written on the 
30th of March, and was signed by Mr. Holbrook, Mr. 
Richardson, Mr. Lever, Mr. Scoles, Mr. Risley, Mr. 
Finch, Mr. Bell, Mr. Angier, Mr. Newcome, Mr. Con- 
stantine, Mr. Eaton and Mr. Jones, all Non-Conforming 
ministers residing at Manchester and in its immediate 
vicinity. A reply was received from a minister in Lon- 
don, probably Mr. Stretton, which opens a view of the 
method in which the court meant to proceed in granting 
the licenses: — " This day I was with Sir Joseph Wil- 
liamson, through whose hands this business passes under 
Lord Arlington, who readily granted me a license to 
preach in any licensed place, and another for the place 
I nominated, both to be ready immediately." The writer 
then mentioned the names of other ministers for whom 
he desired licenses, but he was informed that govern- 
ment expected application should be made from persons 
in the country by themselves, with an acknowledgment 
of the favour of His Majesty towards them in granting 
this indulgence, and that they meant to use it with mo- 
deration and peaceableness. In respect to the application 
that they might be allowed to preach in public churches 
or chapels, that was absolutely refused. A minister 
might name his own house, or any other convenient 
place. It was also required that the minister's opinion 
be punctually stated, whether he was of the Presbyterian, 
Independent, or Anabaptist persuasion, or denomination 



226 



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as it was afterwards called*...^ At this interview Sir 
Joseph Williamson urged the propriety of an application 
being made in all cases in the form of an address or 
petition, and he said that the court expected applications 
to be made without delay. The reason of this is appa- 
rent. Written pledges were thus obtained from the 
heads of the Presbyterian body at once of their approval 
of the dispensing power, and their willingness to step 
down from their high position as men bent on effecting 
a change in the constitution of the National Church, to 
become mere separatists, each officiating in his own 
place licensed for the purpose by public authority, and 
to his own little community of followers. 

A minister who took a license for his house at 
the Hermitage in Cheshire, wrote thus, on the 9th of 
April : — " I would willingly have my own house licensed, 
since it may be no prejudice to my liberty elsewhere. I 
am very much afraid that in the general this course will 
run us into absolute Independency and separation ; and 
that in the public places, where the usual hours are 
taken (as they will generally be throughout England), 
the present church's harvest will be thin of ears ; and 
where these hours are not taken, excepting amongst a 
very few sober people, nothing will be done." 

Philip Henry took nearly the same view : — " The 
danger is, lest the allowing of separate places help to 
overthrow our parish-order, which God hath owned, 
and to beget divisions and animosities amongst us, which 
no honest heart but would rather should be healed. 
We are put hereby into a trilemma ; either to turn 
Independents in practice, or to strike in with the Con- 
formists, or to sit down in former silence and suffering, 
till the Lord shall open a more effectual door." 

Adam Martindale, a very sensible man, but in this point 

* Baxter, who was never without his doubt and scruple, refused 
to accept of a license in which any of these words were contained. 
He would be styled only a Non-Conformist. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



227 



extremely bigoted, expresses his judgement thus: — " I 
confess I was not satisfied whether the king could, by his 
prerogative, suspend the execution of all ecclesiastical 
laws ; but this was above my skill. And I did so little 
like a universal toleration, that I have oft said and once 
writ in answer to a book which Mr. Baxter after more 
largely answered in print, that if the king had offered me 
my liberty upon condition that I would consent that 
Papists, Quakers and all other wicked sects should have 
theirs also, I think I should never have agreed to it. 
But seeing the king's license did but help to clear my 
way to do that which I would have done without it if I 
could have been suffered, being, as I believed, illegally 
rent from my people by the patron and bishop, and that 
the Papists and all others must have their liberty whether 
I would or no, T resolved to take mine, that I might 
help to countervail them." 

But, notwithstanding these difficulties, the general 
feeling throughout the Non -Conforming body was, that 
the Indulgence ought to be accepted ; and addresses and 
applications flowed in from all parts of the kingdom, 
and were graciously received. It cannot however be 
doubted that the Presbyterians at this time made a great 
sacrifice of principle, and allowed themselves to be forced 
into the position which the Independents had occupied 
on principle and from choice. And hence it is that 
Bishop Stillingfleet represents the acceptance of the In- 
dulgence offered at this time as the true beginning of 
English Protestant Dissent. 

On the 19th of April, Mr. Heywood, who, though he 
had been long settled in Yorkshire, ever considered him- 
self as nearly connected with the ministers of his native 
county, was at Manchester, where he spent the forenoon 
in prayer with Mr. Newcome and Mr. Finch ; and in 
the afternoon there was a meeting of eighteen ministers, 
" to consult about our use of the king's Declaration ; 
there was a great harmony." 

Q 2 



228 



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The following address was agreed upon: — 

" To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, 
" The most humble and dutiful acknowledgment of the 
Non-Conforming Ministers in the County of Lancaster ; 
" May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty, 
" We, your most loyal and faithful subjects, being 
deeply sensible of your princely clemency and favourable 
inclination towards us manifested in your most gracious 
Declaration of Indulgence, dated March 15, 1671-2, 
make this our most humble and grateful acknowledg- 
ment thereof, sincerely promising our constant and cordial 
endeavours, to the utmost of our capacity, to promote 
Your Majesty's honour, interest and authority, as also 
our peaceable and inoffensive deportment in the exercise 
of the liberty so freely vouchsafed to us ; whereby as 
(by God's assistance) we shall evidence that our Non- 
Conformity was not out of any disaffection or disloyalty 
to Your Majesty's person or government, so we shall 
give Your Majesty such cause to be confident of our 
loyalty as we hope may encourage you to continue your 
royal favour, and to confirm your gracious indulgence 
and clemency towards us." 

This address was signed by thirty-eight Presbyterian 
ministers, and six Independents. Among the former 
are Mr. Angier, Mr. Newcome, Mr. Nathaniel Heywood 
and Mr. Samuel Angier ; and amongst the latter Mr. 
Briscoe and Mr. Jollie. 

Of what was done by the Yorkshire ministers I find 
no account, except that in May there was a meeting of 
a portion of tbem at York, at which, after much debate, 
the following declaration was agreed upon. (Mr. Hey- 
wood was not present) : — 

■ - We, knowing that union and communion is the 
ground and strength of all lasting society, sacred and 
civil, and seriously considering the great evils that 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



229 



have come and may befall a church and kingdom by 
heresy and schism on the one hand, and sedition and 
rebellion on the other (these breaking the bonds of loy- 
alty and well-grounded peace, the other of truth and 
charity), have resolved, that, as we do with all thank- 
fulness accept His Majesty's Indulgence to us of liberty 
to exercise our ministry, which is far more dear to us 
than all worldly concernments ; so in making use of it 
we will endeavour it may be done without the least 
tendency to division or any breach of loyalty or obedi- 
ence to His Majesty's person and government, or unne- 
cessary separation and breach of the knot of union, 
peace and charity with that part of the visible church 
whereof we profess ourselves members. In order to which 
end we have consented and do agree, First : That by 
making use of His Majesty's Indulgence and receiving 
licenses to preach, it is not our intention to set up any 
distinct or separate churches in opposition to those 
already established, but, as members of one and the 
same church and preachers of the same doctrine therein 
declared, to be, what in us lies, helpful to the established 
ministers in carrying on the same general ends of piety, 
loyalty and charity, by instructing their people in mat- 
ters of religion and duty to God and the king. 

" Second: That in the course of preaching in our li- 
censed places, we will not take up the canonical hours in 
any city, town corporate, parish or chapelry where there 
is an established minister or ministers that will do their 
work, but shall preach in other convenient hours before 
or after (on Lord's Days, holy days and other seasonable 
times), as shall be least prejudicial to the more public 
and authorised devotions, which we also do intend to 
frequent, and to persuade the people we are acquainted 
with to a constant attendance upon. 

" Third : We declare that it is our desire (and accord- 
ingly we will endeavour) to persuade those people that 
shall come to hear us, or any of us, that they pay all 
their covenanted and accustomed dues and duties to their 
parish ministers, and that they withdraw not any part 



230 



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of them (or of their wonted respects) from them upon 
our account, but that they express their duty therein 
more cheerfully to God and the ministers by how much 
more helpful opportunities they have and do enjoy. 

" Fourth : That we judge it our duty, in the exercise 
of our ministry, so to preach as to insist on those points 
that we conceive most tend to charity and holiness, and 
to follow after those things that make for peace, and 
things wherewith one may edify another ; and, therefore, 

" Fifth: That we will studiously avoid all needless 
controversies, exhorting the people to labour after unity 
between our brethren and us and among themselves, by 
their prayers to the God of peace and by their amicable 
and even behaviour to all ; that it may not be said, ' I 
am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas but, 
whoever planteth and watereth, that they themselves 
may labour to be God's husbandry and may bless that 
God who giveth them increase. 

" Sixth : That it may appear we desire union and peace 
with all, and to be helpful to our power to the work of 
the Lord, wherever we may, we will not refuse to preach 
in the congregational meeting-places or assemblies when 
requested or desired, provided they do not therein carry 
on such designs as tend to the manifest breach of the 
bonds of peace and unity by endeavouring to gather 
separate churches. 

" Seventh : That we will be assistant in what we can 
to the legally settled ministers and others who own them- 
selves Protestants of the Church of England, by discourse 
or dispute, in defence of truth, against the common ene- 
mies to the doctrines of the Catholic Church ; and also, 

" Eighth: That if His Majesty (our gracious Sove- 
reign), upon ours or any others' petition, shall, in his 
great wisdom, see it fit, and be satisfied that it may yet 
tend to further happy advantages to church and kingdom, 
that our liberty be enlarged to preach in churches and 
chapels, we do resolve to give what assistance we can to 
our brethren of the conformable clergy, in carrying on 
the great work and ends of their ministry, at such con- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



231 



venient times as they shall desire, and shall chearfully 
also preach in such places as are not otherwise supplied, 
when we shall be licensed thereunto." 

The ministers of Derbyshire also met, and agreed to- 
gether that they would not preach at the time when the 
public churches were open, — more striking evidence of 
their unwillingness to separate cannot be given, — and 
desired to be still considered members of the National 
Church. 

As a specimen of the form of petition when applica- 
tion was made for licenses, I give that presented by 
Robert Diggles, Thomas Bayley, Thomas Evans and 
eleven other persons, inhabitants of Manchester, in be- 
half of themselves and others, on which the license was 
was granted to Mr. Newcome : — 

" The humble address, &c, sheweth, that Your Ma- 
jesty's gracious declaration of the 15th of March last 
past, wherein Your Majesty's Indulgence to such as can- 
not conform in all things to the Church of England as 
it is now established is so fully manifested, is with all 
humble thankfulness acknowledged by us ; and profess- 
ing our loyalty to Your Sacred Majesty with all sin- 
cerity, and resolving, by the grace of God, to use the 
liberty so given us with that moderation and peaceable- 
ness that Your Majesty may not have cause to repent the 
favour afforded to us therein, we are humble petitioners to 
Your Sacred Majesty that, in pursuance thereof, Your Ma- 
jesty would be graciously pleased to allow and license Mr. 
Henry Newcome, master in arts, one of the Presbyterian 
persuasion, our former minister in this place, to exercise 
his ministerial functions amongst us ; and that the 
house of the said Mr. Newcome, hired for that purpose, 
situate in Manchester, may be the place allowed for their 
meeting ; for which royal favour to the said Mr New- 
come and us, Your Majesty's most humble petitioners 
shall ever pray." 

To return to Mr. Hey wood. The day following that 



232 



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on which he received intelligence of the change in the 
public policy respecting Non-Conformists he kept as a 
fast at Captain Hodgson's. He then went a round of 
visits among his friends at Halifax, Thornhill, Wake- 
field, Leeds and Bramhope ; and a second round to Hop- 
ton, Cawthorne and Denby-hall, where lived his intimate 
friends the Cottons. They were no doubt visits of con- 
gratulation and delight. He then took his journey into 
Lancashire, visiting Mr. Horton at Sow T erby by the way. 
He visited Rochdale, Denton and other places, as well 
as Manchester and Bolton,, and returned home on April 
26. A license was obtained for him, which bears date 
April 20, and was received by him on May 4. On the 
next day he preached at his house at Coley-hall to a 
great number of people. 

" Charles R. 

" Charles, by the grace of God, King of England, 
Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. 
To all mayors, bailiffs, constables and other officers and 
ministers, civil and military, whom it may concern, 
greeting. In pursuance of our Declaration of the loth 
of March, 167 J, We do hereby permit and license Oliver 
Hey wood, of the Presbyterian persuasion, to be a teacher 
of the congregation allowed by us in a room or rooms 
in his own house, in the parish of Halifax in the county 
of York, for the use of such as do not conform to the 
Church of England, w 7 ho are of the persuasion commonly 
called Presbyterian, with further license and permission 
to him, the said Oliver Heywood, to teach in any place 
licensed and allowed by us, according to our said De- 
claration. Given at our Court at Whitehall, the 20th day 
of April, in the twenty-fourth year of our reign, 1672. 

" By his Majesty's command. 

u LT i . r * „ " Arlington." 

Hewood, a teacher*. 

* This was Mr. Hey wood's original license. He took out a 
second for the house of John Butterworth [at Warley] in the parish 
of Halifax, which bears date July 25, 1672, and this is the license 
of which an admirable fac- simile is given in the second volume of 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



233 



When Mr. Heywood received this license he was just 
on the point of removing from Coley-hall to the house 
in the village of Northowram, about half a mile distance, 
the house in which he had formerly lived, in which his 
two sons were born and where his mother died. He was 
formerly the tenant, he now returned to it as the pro- 
prietor, which he notices as a circumstance worthy 
observation, inasmuch as the owner of it had thought 
by turning him out of it when he was only a tenant to 
compel him to leave the neighbourhood. He was able 
to accomplish the purchase by presents which had un- 
expectedly flowed in upon him. He gave one hundred 
marks for the house and a little portion of land ; his 
friend and neighbour Jonathan Priestley managing the 
business for him. He says that he " preferred this 
house to any in the whole country round ; and the rather 
that it is in Coley where my heart is more than in any 
place in the whole world beside." He lived in it for the 
remainder of his life, thirty years, and died in it. On 
the first evening which he spent in it he directed his son 
to read the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah, and he 

Mr. Vint's edition of the Works of Mr. Heywood. This second license 
is in the possession of Mr. Heywood's descendants. The former found 
its way into the museum of Mr. Wilson of Broomhead-hall near Shef- 
field, who collected with great avidity documents of every description, 
and left a noble collection of them at his death in 1783. I have seen 
both. It remains to be added, that in The Life of Oliver Heywood, 
by the Rev. J. Fawcett of Ewood-hall, a Baptist minister (2nd edit. 
Halifax, 12mo, 1809, p. 79), there is what purports to be a copy of 
the license granted to Mr. Heywood, but with this remarkable dif- 
ference, that he is described as being of the " Independent," not 
"Presbyterian," persuasion. Dr. Fawcett's copy of the license cannot 
be genuine. He was too good a man to be suspected of any fraud, 
and he seems to have drawn up the license as he concluded it must 
have run, regarding Mr. Heywood, contrary however to all manner of 
evidence, as an Independent, not a Presbyterian, by the assistance 
of a printed copy of a license granted to another minister, which he 
found in Calamy. But such fabrications are always dangerous ; and 
who can tell how much some persons may have been influenced by 
this unauthentic instrument to take a share in the attempts which 
have been lately made by the modern Independents to appropriate 
to themselves the Presbyterian endowments ? 



234 



THE LIFE OF 



runs a parallel between his case and that of the prophet, 
in which, however, there is nothing peculiarly striking. 

One of the largest rooms in the house he immediately 
set apart for the purpose of receiving the people who 
came to attend his religious ministrations. He calls it 
his * meeting-house.' " On Lord's Day, May 12, I 
preached in my meeting-house in Northowram ; had vast 
multitudes of people." — Again, May 29, " I had multi- 
tudes in and about my house, many went away because 
they could not come within hearing ; oh for Rehoboth, 
room!" — " On Wednesday, May 19, we had a private 
fast in my meeting-house, the first week-day fast we 
have had there; God graciously helped." — June 2. " I 
preached at home ; had a great assembly." 

But besides what he did at home in this first month 
of his liberty, he was engaged in many other services in 
distant places : he kept a fast with four other ministers 
at Mr. Sharp's ; another at Joshua Seynior's ; another 
at John Kershaw's. He preached at John Butterworth's 
in Warley, where was a vast multitude of people. He 
kept a private day at Josiah Stansfield's. He also went 
to Wakefield, Hague-hall and Morley, at which last 
place he left his two sons to remain for education under 
the care of David Noble, a Non-Conforming minister, 
placing them at board at the house of Mr. Thomas 
Dawson. 

The persons who formed the crowds who at this pe- 
riod attended Mr. Heywood's ministry may be divided 
into two classes, the constant and the occasional hearers. 
The former consisted, for the most part, of persons who 
had been his hearers while he was the public minister at 
Coley, and who had not ceased to look upon him as 
their pastor, though the bond between them had been 
forcibly broken. These had been accustomed to attend 
his secret ministrations, and they now stood forward as 
persons desirous to acknowledge him in a formal and 
public manner as their pastor and teacher, and to form 
his regular congregation, till the time came when they, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



235 



both pastor and people, might be received again into 
the National Church. Mr. Hey wood immediately formed 
them in church-order, as he had attempted to do when 
he was the public minister, together with other persons 
who were desirous to join with them. They subscribed 
the following covenant # :— 

" We, the inhabitants of Coley chapelry and others, 
being professors of the Christian religion, do willingly 
and heartily subscribe to the doctrine of the Gospel con- 
tained in the Scriptures of truth, and solemnly profess 
our faith in God the Father, Creator of all things, in 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the redeemer of God's 
elect, and in the Holy Ghost, the sanctifier and com- 
forter of the faithful, and do give up ourselves to the 
Lord in covenant according to the terms of the Gospel, to 
be ruled by His will in His word, acknowledging the need 
we have of the ministry of the word and seals of the cove- 
nant for our edification, do still own Oliver Hey wood 
(whom God hath wonderfully restored to the exercise of 
his ministry amongst us) as our rightful pastor formerly 
chosen by us, and shall be willing, by the assistance of 
God's grace, to believe and practise what truths and 
duties he shall make manifest to us to be the mind 
of God, desirous to maintain communion with God 
and one another in God's worship, and to discharge 
what mutual duties God requires of us in his word as 
members of the same body, as occasion shall be offered ; 
resolving, by the grace of God, to walk in our places, as 
becomes the Gospel, in all good conscience towards 
God, one another, and to all others, to the end of our 
days, against all opposition by the persecutions and 

* Though Mr. Heywood left an account of this transaction 
and many memoranda respecting the congregation, it is not easy 
to collect with exactness the number of persons whom he thus in 
the first instance gathered around him ; but they appear to have 
been above a hundred. Among them was Mrs. Mary Maleverer. 
whose mother was a grand-daughter of Archbishop Toby Matthew. 
This lady removed to Wakefield on her marriage with Mr. Samuel 
Boyse, a merchant there. 



236 



THE LIFE OF 



allurements of the world, temptations of Satan, and cor- 
ruptions of our wicked hearts, in order to the glory of 
God and our eternal salvation." 

And they gave, one by one, the following pledge :- — 

(C I do heartily take this one God for my only God 
and my chief good, and this Jesus Christ for my only 
Lord, Redeemer and Saviour, and this Holy Ghost for my 
Sanctifler ; and the doctrine by Him revealed, and sealed 
by His miracles, and now contained in the Holy Scriptures, 
I do take for the law of God and the rule of my faith and 
life ; and, repenting unfeignedly of my sins, I do resolve, 
through the grace of God, sincerely to obey Him both in 
holiness to God and righteousness to man, and in special 
love to the saints and communion with them, against 
all the temptations of the devil, the world, and my own 
flesh, and this to the death. 

u I do consent to be a member of the particular 
church at Northowram, whereof Oliver Hey wood is 
teacher and overseer, and to submit to his teaching and 
ministerial guidance and oversight, according to God's 
word, and to hold communion with that church in the 
public worshipping of God, and to submit to the bro- 
therly admonition of fellow-members, that so we may 
be built up in knowledge and holiness, and may the 
better maintain our obedience to Christ and the welfare 
of this society, and hereby may the more please and 
glorify God."* 

Mr. Heywood himself made the following declara- 
tion : — 

" I, Oliver Heywood, in the county of York, mini- 
ster of the Gospel, having spent above twenty years in 
the Lord's work amongst the inhabitants of Coley cha- 
pelry, being suspended ten years from the public exercise 
of my ministry, am now at last restored, upon the ear- 
nest prayers of the church, to the exercise of my pastoral 
work in mine own house, by His Majesty's Declaration 
and license, dated March 15th, 1672, do willingly and 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



237 



thankfully accept of this open liberty of my ministry, 
lamenting my former neglects, justifying the Lord in the 
evil He hath brought upon us, begging reconciliation 
and a better heart to do God's work more faithfully, 
and imploring his blessing for success ; and now resol- 
ving, by the assistance of God's grace, to give myself up 
to the Lord's work, among this people, in studying the 
Scriptures, preaching the word in season and out of 
season, praying with and for them, watching over them, 
instructing, admonishing, exhorting them publicly and 
privately, endeavouring to convert sinners, to confirm, 
comfort and quicken saints, to administer baptism and 
the Lord's Supper, exercise discipline according to the 
rules of the Gospel, (so far as I am convinced, from the 
word,) to walk before them in all holy example ; resol- 
ving, by the grace of God, to suffer affliction and perse- 
cution with the people of God, if God call to it, as the 
faithful soldier of Christ and pastor of souls ; that at last 
I may give up my account with joy, being pure from the 
blood of all men. So promiseth the unworthy servant 
of Christ, Oliver Hey wood." 

In this sensible, rational, affecting and edifying man- 
ner was the foundation laid of one of the Presbyterian 
congregations in the West Riding, one hundred and 
seventy years ago, a congregation which still exists, 
though it has undergone many modifications as well as 
various fortunes. And in a similar manner were the 
foundations laid of many other congregations, throughout 
the kingdom, though there is reason to think, in some 
instances, without these particular and formal pledges. 

In its foundation the congregation at Northowram was 
purely Presbyterian, the pastor taking no authority from 
the people to teach and to preach, but deriving it by de- 
volution from his fathers in the ministry at whose hands 
he had received ordination. Neither were there deacons 
appointed with co-ordinate authority with the pastor, 
with whom alone it remained to accept into his congre- 
gation those whom he thought proper to admit, and to 



238 



THE LIFE OF 



regulate the times, the manner and order of the public 
ministrations as seemed to himself to tend most to edi- 
fication. 

The congregation took the pledge on Wednesday, the 
12th of June, on which occasion the Lord's Supper was 
administered. Here the ordinance appears to have been 
used as a kind of solemn ratification of the covenant, a 
purpose to which in all ages it appears to have been 
applied. 

As soon as it was known that Mr. Heywood had ga- 
thered about him a congregation thus pledged to accept 
him as their pastor and to walk together in church- 
order and union, some persons who were Independents 
in principle expressed a desire to be permitted to join 
with them. Some of these had been members of the 
Independent church which the elder Root had collected 
at Sowerby, which church had been nearly dispersed on 
his decease. Mr. Heywood speaks of them as the soberer 
part ; but it is best to give his own account of this ma- 
terial addition to his charge : — 

" Upon Tuesday, June 18, '72, there was a solemn 
meeting appointed at my house betwixt our brethren of 
the Congregational persuasion and us. Accordingly 
there came several of Mr. Root's church, expressing their 
desire to join in communion with us in all ordinances. 
We declared plainly the state of both societies ; our pre- 
sent actings, and the principles upon which we acted. 
And though our principles were different, yet we con- 
curred in our actings for the main, and both parties 
were willing to overlook any matters of difference. And 
upon further debate and enumerating our members, 
they fully acquiesced in my fidelity as to admission; 
were willing to take them as they stood without de- 
manding any further satisfaction concerning them ; and 
we also owned theirs, and were willing to entertain 
them to all ordinances : and a special season was ap- 
pointed for communicating together in the Lord's Sup- 
per. Both parties went away abundantly satisfied." 
Then, remembering how despitefully he had been treated 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



239 



by the Independents at the time of Sir George Booth's 
rising, he adds : — " This is the strange work of God ! 
Men's spirits are strangely altered. Captain Hodgson 
earnestly promoted this work. Blessed be God. Zeph. 
iii. 9, Jeremiah 1. 5, Phil. iii. 15." 

Again : — "The servants of God through the nation, 
and particularly in this congregation, have a long time 
been begging a union and accommodation among the 
Lord's people. Particularly it has been my prayer to 
God for this poor congregation that it might be united 
together in Christian communion ; and many years ago 
we had many meetings for that end, and still broke. 
But now at last the Congregational men among us 
have desired to sit down with us at the Lord's Supper. 
We had a conference and agreed upon it ; and now, ac- 
cordingly, July 14, 1 672, we enjoyed that distinguishing 
ordinance together, being Lord's Day evening; were about 
sixty communicants of our and their members ; sweet 
harmony ; some comfortable presages of God, and good 
satisfaction." 

Besides Captain Hodgson, the principal person who 
then joined with them was Mr. Joshua Horton of 
Sowerby # . 

Mr. Hey wood laid the foundation, at nearly the same 
time, of another Presbyterian society at Warley, another 
place in the parish of Halifax. " God," saith he, " hath 
cut out work for me in a new place ; for, upon Whitsun- 

* Robert Tillotson, father of the archbishop, had been a member 
of Mr. Root's church, but deserted it before the death of Mr. Root. 
He died in February, 1683. Mr. Heywood was invited to the funeral, 
but did not go. The archbishop's earliest connections lay among the 
Puritans of the stricter kind. A letter from Clare-hall to Mr. Root, the 
pastor of the family, written in 1 649, has been often printed. There is 
the following notice of him by Mr. Heywood : — " Dr. Tillotson came 
to Sowerby, May 21,1 675, to visit his aged father, Robert Tillotson, 
who is eighty-two ; allows his father, who traded all away, forty 
pounds a-year to live on. Preached at Sowerby twice on Lord's Day, 
May 23, being Whitsunday, on 1 John iii. 10, plainly and honestly, 
though some expressions were accounted dark and doubtful. May 
30, he preached at Halifax." 



240 



THE LIFE OF 



Tuesday, May 28, '72, I was called to preach at John 
Butterworth's house in Warley, where a great multitude 
of people were got together. T hired the house for 
preaching in a twelvemonth for fifty shillings. God 
helped my heart ; awakened people's affections, gave me 
some encouragement that God hath some work in that 
barren place. Yea, there are several in that neighbour- 
hood that have come to hear me in mine own house 
above a year, and have set up religious duties and 
meetings together ; so that there is good hope of mercy 
for them." He got a license for this house, himself 
being named as the minister ; and we find him frequently 
preaching to this congregation in this year. But at the 
end of the year he gave it up. The reason given for the 
discontinuance was, that it was too near the meeting- 
house which Mr. Joshua Horton had established at 
Sowerby, and that Mr. Bentley, who seems not to have 
had the zeal or energy of Mr. Heywood, said the people 
would have too much preaching. 

On June 5, he went to Leeds, where he found that 
Mr. Nesse had already established a meeting-house, at 
which Mr. Heywood preached. This was the beginning 
of the Independent congregation afterwards meeting at 
the chapel in Call-lane in that town. 

On June 13, he went into Howarth parish, where he 
had never been before, and which he describes as a very 
immoral and profane place, where there had never been 
good preaching. He preached at the house of Jonas 
Foster to a very large assembly. 

July 7, Going into Lancashire, he found that the Non- 
Conformists of Rochdale had established a meeting- 
house, at which he preached, and again, a few weeks 
later, with his brother of Ormskirk. 

July 22, He set out on a round of visits in the neigh- 
bourhood of Wakefield ; baptized a son of Mr. Thorpe 
of Hopton-hall ; lodged at Mr. Josiah Oates' at Chick- 
enley; was present at Wakefield at a " house-lecture" 
of Mr. Kirby's ; went forward to Hemsworth and Bads- 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



241 



worth ; returned to Lady Rodes' at Houghton, and to 
Mr. Wordsworth's at Swathe-halL 

On September 18 he visited his friends in Lancashire, 
where he found a licensed meeting-house in Ainsworth, 
where he had in his youth often been accustomed to go 
to the public chapel : he preached in his brother Good- 
win's pulpit at Bolton with Mr. Pike. On his return 
he lodged at Josiah Stansfield's. He went to Morley 
and preached at Mr. Bayley's meeting-house, an exercise 
with Mr. Jollie : he preached also at Mr. Dawson's 
meeting-house in Birstall parish, so thickly were they 
springing up around him. But before the end of the 
year he preached also at Mr. Holdsworth's meeting- 
house in Heckmondwike ; for Mr. Bentley at Halifax ; at 
Mr. Farrand's house in the parish of Bingley ; and at 
Alverthorpe, near Wakefield, where a malt-kiln had been 
converted into a meeting-house. These were the pri- 
mordia of Presbyterian congregations, some of which 
still exist. 

At Alverthorpe he had many hundred hearers. He 
preached also this year, November 19, at the house of 
Richard Wilkinson, near Keighley, which he describes 
as a profane place. Here he was interrupted while 
preaching, not by the magistracy, but by one of the 
sectaries, a person named West, an Antinomian, who 
had been a Quaker. 

In a few places where the Non-Conformists were rich 
or sanguine, they began to build meeting-houses. This 
was the case at Leeds, where the Presbyterians in 1673 
erected the chapel on Mill-hill, where they still continue 
to assemble. Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary, whose 
father was one of the chief promoters of the design, says 
that it was the first chapel built in the north of England, 
and that it was built, more ecclesiastico, with arches. 
But in general the liberty granted by the Declaration of 
Indulgence was thought too precarious to justify such a 
step as this, and the event showed that it was so. 

R 



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We see, therefore, in the preparation of places set 
apart for public worship, and in the formation of con- 
gregations in church order, though this latter measure 
does not appear to have been general among the Pres- 
byterians, the setting out of a community or sect of 
Christians, the severing them more distinctly than had 
yet been the case from the great community of English 
Protestants. 

But the Non-Conformists, in the year of which I am 
speaking, adopted two other measures which went even 
farther than this in giving them the character of a 
distinct religious community looking forward to a con- 
tinuance in that character. These two measures were 
the establishment of academies for the education of their 
youth of the better condition in University learning, and 
especially of the youth who were destined for the minis- 
try among them ; and the ordination among themselves 
of persons who were desirous to enter the Presbyterian 
ministry. 

The Non-Conformists in the north of England were 
fortunate in having amongst them a person who was 
excellently well qualified to discharge the duties of that 
difficult and responsible office, the tutor and director of 
one of these academies. This was Mr. Frankland, a 
minister then in the vigour of life, being of the same 
age with Mr. Heywood, and having studied at the same 
time in the University of Cambridge. " There," says Ca- 
lamy, "he made good proficiency both in divine and 
human learning, and had no small credit in the Univer- 
sity." He there also was deeply impressed by the minis- 
try of Mr. Hammond. He received Presbyterian ordi- 
nation in 1653, and was settled at Bishop Auckland 
when the Uniformity Act drove him out of the Church. 
It was the re-ordination on which he chiefly rested his 
dissent, and his repugnance to renounce his Presbyterian 
orders led him to resist the importunities of Bishop 
Cosin, who would gladly have retained him in the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



243 



Church *. In the Commonwealth times he was named 
a tutor in the college which was to be established at 
Durham for the northern youth. When he was silenced 
he retired to Rathmel in Craven, where he had an here- 
ditary estate. Here he set up a private academy, having 
under his charge a son of Sir Thomas Liddel, a son of 
Dr. Whitaker, a physician near Burnley, who afterwards 
became the minister of the Independent congregation at 
Leeds ; also Els ton, who was afterwards the minister 
of the Independent congregation at Topcliffe. Three 
other names are mentioned of early students in the list 
of his pupils, which is printed as an appendix to the 
funeral sermon of Mr. Daniel Madock of Burton-upon- 
Trent, one of the last survivors of them, and which 
agrees with one in Mr. Heywood's hand- writing in most 
particulars ; but it was in 1672 that the academy began 
to flourish, and that the Presbyterian ministers began to 
send their sons who were destined to the ministry to the 
care of Mr. Frankland. Some opposition was made to 
Mr. Frankland, and he was obliged to move his academy 
from place to place, as in 1674 to Natland, near Kendal : 
in 1683 to Calton in Craven; in 1686 to Attercliffe, 
near Sheffield ; and in 1689 to Rathmel again, where it 
continued till Mr. Frankland's decease in 1698. The 
whole number of pupils was three hundred and three. 
After his death the academy was continued by Mr. 
Chorlton, Mr. Newcome's successor as the Presbyterian 
minister at Manchester, and another academy for the 
north was established by Mr. Jollie of Sheffield at 
Attercliffe soon after the time when Mr. Frankland 
left that village. One of the pupils of Mr. Frankland, 
Dr. Clegge of Chapel-en-le-Frith, describes the course 
of study in this academy as having consisted of " logic, 
metaphysics, somatology, pneumatology, natural philo- 

* The bishop proposed to give him ordination in private, thus : 
" If thou hast not been ordained, I ordain thee," &c. Mr. Frank- 
land declined, on the ground of conscience. — Account, &c, p. 286. 

R 2 



244 



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sophy, divinity, and chronology," and gives some par- 
ticulars of the discipline of the house # . 

The first Presbyterian ordination among the Non- 
Conformists in the north of England, and perhaps the 
first in any part of the kingdom, was held at Manchester 
on the 29 th of October, 1672. Mr. Hey wood was one 
of the ministers engaged in itf, the others being Mr. 
Angier, Mr. Newcome, Mr. Finch, and Mr. Robert 
Eaton , at whose house in Deans-gate the ordination was 
performed. The persons ordained had been all in the 
exercise of the ministry for several years. They were 
Mr. Joseph Dawson, the near neighbour and friend of 
Mr. Heywood ; Mr. Samuel Angier, the nephew of Mr. 
Angier of Denton; and Mr. John Jollie, a younger bro- 
ther of Thomas Jollie of Altham. 

The notices by Mr. Heywood of what was done on 
this occasion are few. The duties of the day were begun 
by Mr. Eaton with prayer : then Mr. Finch prayed ; then 
Mr. Heywood. Mr. Angier took the confession of faith 
from Mr. Dawson, and his answers to what Mr. Hey- 

* The Life and Character of the Rev. John Ashe of Ashford, 12mo, 
1736, p. 53—56. 

f On his arrival at Manchester the day before, he went imme- 
diately to the church, where the Warden was preaching a funeral 
sermon for Mr. Nicholas Moseley of Ancoats, whom he calls his 
" uncle," with that disposition which prevailed in those times to 
comprehend as many persons as possible within the terms of rela- 
tionship. Mr. Moseley was brother to Mrs. Angier, the second wife 
of Mr. Angier, whose daughter by a former marriage Mr. Heywood 
had married to his first wife. Mr. Moseley is described as a justice 
of the peace, and a great man in those parts. He was travelling on 
horseback to London with his man and two Dickinsons, his friends, 
accompanying him, and was seized with an apoplectic attack while 
on horseback, when near Lichfield, and died in twelve hours. The 
body was brought in a coach to Manchester. He was on his way to 
London to carry on a suit which he had commenced against his bro- 
ther, Mr. Edward Moseley of Holme-hall, who was executor to Sir 
Edward Moseley, by whom a legacy of 7000/. had been bequeathed 
to Nicholas. A great suit with the Maynards had also arisen out 
of the will of Sir Edward. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



245 



wood calls the usual questions ; he then delivered the 
ordination prayer with imposition of hands. Mr. New- 
come did the same for the younger Angier, and Mr. 
Eaton for Mr. Jollie. Then Mr. Newcome delivered a 
discourse from 1 Timothy iv. 12, and gave the young 
ministers a charge ; and the whole was concluded with 
prayer and the blessing. Mr. Heywood having given 
these few particulars observes, " It was a sweet solemn 
day ; an hopeful budding of Aaron's rod after a sharp 
winter : Blessed be the Lord !" No persons appear to 
have been present except those engaged. 

Towards the close of the year, namely, on the 27th 
of November, Mr. Heywood kept a solemn day of 
thanksgiving for the liberty which had been granted 
them ; on which occasion, to use his own expression, 
" he made his friends a feast." 



246 



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CHAPTER XII. 
1673—1674. 

MR. HEYWOOD INTERRUPTED AT LASSEL-HALL. CHRISTMAS FESTIVI- 
TIES AT WOODSOME. PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT RESPECTING 

THE KING'S DECLARATION. THE TEST ACT.— FEELING OF NON-CON- 
FORMISTS TOWARDS THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. SUCCESS OF MR. HEY- 

WOOD'S LABOURS. THE BAYLEYS. DEVOTES HIS SONS TO THE 

NON-CONFORMING MINISTRY, AND SENDS THEM TO MR. HICKMAN^. 

INTERESTING DOMESTIC SERVICE BEFORE THEIR DEPARTURE. 

MR. HORTON BUILDS A CHAPEL AT SOWERBY. OPPOSITION OF DR. 

HOOKE. VIOLENT DISSENSIONS IN THE PARISH. THE DUKE OF 

BUCKINGHAM AT HALIFAX. DUEL OF MR. JENNINGS AND MR. AIS- 

LABIE. NON-CONFORMITY AT YORK ; LEEDS ; WAKEFIELD. IN- 
TERRUPTION. DEATHS OF SEVERAL MINISTERS. HIS SONS GO TO 

MR. FRANKLAND'S. MARRIAGE OF HIS SERVANT, MARTHA BAIR- 

STOW. 

1673. 

On new-year's day Mr. Heywood travelled through great 
rain and tempest to the village of Idle, where he preached 
in the meeting-place, at which at that time Mr. Johnson 
usually officiated # . On the 2nd of January he preached 
at Mr. Richardson's at Lassel-hall, and while thus en- 
gaged he was interrupted by a clerk of Sir John Kaye 
of Woodsome, a neighbouring magistrate, who was zeal- 
ous against Non-Conformity. The clerk required Mr. 
Heywood and Mr. Richardson to produce their licenses, 
and on the next day they repaired to Woodsome, where 

* Who is the Mr. Johnson mentioned very slightly hy Dr. Calamy, 
ejected in Yorkshire. He lived in the latter part of his life at Pain- 
thorpe near Wakefield, and his modest tomb still remains in a retired 
part of the church-yard of Sandal. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



247 



they produced the license for Lassel-hall. Mr. Heywood 
had not his own license with him, but he sent it in a 
few days for the inspection of Sir John Kaye. At the 
interview, Sir John Kaye intimated that they had gone 
beyond the king's intention, and that his permission was 
abused. It is not clear that this could be made out, so 
that, no wonder, Mr. Heywood departed little satisfied 
with the interview. He w T as the less so, as he found 
the house at Woodsome full of jollity. There was 
" open house, feasting, drinking, revelling: there I saw 
a great number of gentlemen, among whom was Mr. 
Thomas Horton, musicians, master of misrule, or lord 
of misrule, as they call him, &c." Mr. Heywood had 
fallen on the twelve days of Christmas, which from time 
immemorial had been observed as a time of great hospi- 
tality in the old halls of Yorkshire, but especially at 
Woodsome # . 

On the 13th he preached at James Dyson's in West- 

* Some years ago I caused to be inserted in The Retrospective 
Review the Christmas Song of Woodsome, from a copy by one of the 
family. It has more of good feeling than of poetry, and it certainly 
gives a not-unfavourable impression of the effect of the Christmas 
hospitalities of the old time. Take three of the stanzas as a speci- 
men : — 

" The master of this house, where now ye are set, 
Doth think you all welcome and much in your debt ; 
That with him you are pleased to use honest mirth, 
And with him to rejoice in Jesus Christ's birth." 

" He doth eke require you, both more and less, 
If there be among you any grief or distress, 
To reconcile yourselves, in this time of mirth, 
That you may be partakers of Jesus Christ's birth." 

" The master of this house, simple though he be, 
Doth care for his neighbours in every degree ; 
And earnestly biddeth you turn wrath to mirth, 
By the godly embracing of Jesus Christ's birth." 

Yet it must, I fear, be allowed that there was much of intemperance 
at the festive meetings of the gentry of the better class at that time 
in Yorkshire. 



248 



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wood, near Slaughthwaite, and on the next day, five 
miles further, at Lidget, a licensed place, where after- 
wards a chapel arose. On March 16 he was at Dr. John 
Hall's at Kipping in Thornton, to preach, where also 
one of the old Non-Conforming societies arose. 

On April 1 1 he was at Manchester, where he attended 
a meeting held at Mr. Newcome's house to consult about 
" ministers' continuance to preach." I do not find more 
respecting this meeting in any remains of the time, but 
it was plainly held in reference to the new position of 
public affairs, the Parliament, which met in February, 
having passed a resolution that the king's Declaration 
was at variance with the constitution. The terms of the 
vote were these : " That His Majesty's pretended power 
of suspending the penal laws in matters ecclesiastical 
might tend to the interruption of the free course of the 
laws and the altering of the legislative power, which hath 
been always acknowledged to reside in His Majesty and 
in his two Houses of Parliament." Mr. Love, one of 
the members for the city of London, and himself a Non- 
Conformist, voted for this resolution, declaring that he 
would rather still go without liberty than have it in a 
way that would prove so detrimental to the nation. 
Plans of legislative relief for the Non-Conformists were 
proposed, but nothing was done ; and the Parliament 
rose, the king having promised that his Declaration 
should not be drawn into a precedent, and having 
given his assent to the bill which was directed against 
the Papists, but which, under the name of the Test Act, 
came afterwards to be regarded as a very great grievance 
by the Non-Conforming Protestants. 

This enactment declared that no person should hold 
any office or place of trust who did not take the oaths of 
supremacy and allegiance ; and that all who should be 
admitted into any office, civil or military, after the first 
day of Easter term, 1673, should receive the sacrament 
according to the usage of the Church of England, with- 
in three months after their admittance, in some public 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



249 



church upon some Lord's Day. The Non-Conformists 
had nothing to object to the oaths of supremacy and 
allegiance ; but with respect to the latter provision, the 
Independent portion of them would object to it as being 
an acknowledgement of a National Church, and the 
Presbyterians as the sacrament could not be received in 
the Church but in the kneeling posture, which to those 
in whom the ancient Puritan scruples were not worn 
away was greatly objectionable ; and after a while, 
through the whole Non-Conforming body, a strong feel- 
ing prevailed that there was desecration of this holy 
ordinance in its being made a kind of test of a man's 
fitness to take upon himself an office which was merely 
temporal. The continuance of this Act, and also of the 
Corporation Act, passed in 1661, which required the 
same test, constituted the great grievance of the Dissent- 
ers after the relief which they obtained by the Toleration 
Act of 1689, nor was it removed till the present century. 

I shall abridge Mr. Heywood's remarks on these af- 
fairs, retaining all that is material. 

"The Parliament being to sit February 4, 1672-3, 
there were many hopes of our adversaries, and great 
fears of God's people, lest they should disannul the 
King's Declaration for our indulgence. The king made 
a speech to the Parliament, tells them of the good effect 
of it, vindicates it from the liberty of Papists thereby. 
We received news from the Parliament that they had 
voted this indulgence illegal, the other party being out- 
voted by sixty votes." Again, "Yesterday, April 3, 
1673, I had intelligence that God hath owned his mi- 
nisters and people, and heard prayer in the face of the 
nation ; particularly that though the Parliament have 
been long puzzling about our liberty, and were resolved 
at least to alter it and settle it some other way according 
to law, which we should have been glad of had the terms 
been tolerable ; but they could not accord, and have 
therefore left it to His Majesty's pleasure to do as he- 
sees occasion, which is that he hath stickled so much 



250 



THE LIFE OF 



for. But withal they have passed a severe bill against 
the Papists, which we take as a rich mercy." 

The last clause is a remarkable indication of the feel- 
ing of the times, especially as coming from a man who 
was himself claiming from the state an indulgence and 
toleration which it was ill disposed to grant ; and it 
shows how little the fundamental principle of toleration 
was then understood even amongst those who wanted 
it, — that men should be thrown on their individual re- 
sponsibility in respect of their religious faith and prac- 
tice as long as they demean themselves as good subjects 
in things temporal. That there was, however, a differ- 
ence between the case of the Non-Conforming Protestant 
and that of the members of the Catholic Church can 
hardly be in fairness denied, arising out of the political 
state of Europe and the then state of the balance of 
power, which rendered the strengthening of the Protest- 
ant interest a matter of great importance to the main- 
tenance of peace and of the independency of the Protest- 
ant states. It required the passing away of four or five 
generations before the Non-Conforming body could be 
brought to see that toleration was the due of the Papist, 
and might safely, and ought justly, to be extended to 
him. Their slowness in coming to this conclusion must 
be in part attributed to their natural jealousy of their 
own liberty, which they conceived to be inseparably 
united with the principles of the Revolution and of the 
accession of the house of Hanover # . But these ob- 

* There are few things more remarkable in the conduct of the 
Non- Conforming body than the pains which they took to cherish an 
abhorrence (I do not use too strong a term) of Popery, without suf- 
ficiently distinguishing between the principle and the persons. I 
find a good old Non- Conformist lady, a grand- daughter of Philip 
Henry, entering in her diary in 1726, that on the 5th of November 
her minister " concluded an excellent discourse with the old pathetic 
exhortation, ' I commend you to the love of God and to the hatred 
of Popery.' " There are expressions of this kind in a sermon of Dr. 
Benson's, a gentle and moderate man, about 1746, which are abso- 
lutely shocking, not merely to Christian feeling, but to the feelings 
of humanity. In some of the dissenting chapels copies of the Book 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



251 



servations of Mr. Hey wood are the more remarkable, 
when we consider that this very Act in which he re- 
joices became almost immediately one of the great 
grievances to his own party. Thus " even-handed jus- 
tice," &c. 

The king did not recall or annul the licenses at this 
time. It was, however, nothing to Mr. Heywood as to 
his own determination, whether king or Parliament were 
favourable or unfavourable to his design. Preach he 
would, whatever might be their determination ; and far 
from me to say this lightly, who have the unimpeacha- 
ble witnesses of the integrity of his heart before me, of 
his zeal for the best interests of man, and of his own 
earnest desire to approve himself a faithful servant of 
Him who had called him. If the public authorities gave 
him facilities, he accepted them and was grateful ; if they 
presented obstacles, he showed that he had an energy of 
action, and an energy of patience also, by which he could 
meet and overcome them. 

He received, at the time of which we are speaking, 
encouragement to proceed in his ministry by finding 
unexpected proofs that he had not spent his strength in 
vain. He often remarks that the people to whom he 
preached were affected at the time ; but on the 23rd of 

of Martyrs were laid on the sacrament-table by the side of the Bible ; 
and this book was preserved in the Non-Conforming families as, next 
to the Bible, their most valuable literary treasure. This book must 
have had great influence on the English nation. I well remember 
it in my own family, and the effect which the prints had upon me in 
early childhood, when the leaves were turned over for me, and a 
plaintive voice, which I seem now to hear, spoke of the pitiable suffer- 
ings of Latimer and Ridley, and the barbarous severities of Bonner. 

The connexion between Dr. Priestley and Mr. Berrington had 
something to do in wearing off these asperities. The labours of 
Dr. Geddes in biblical criticism did more, as showing that the Bible 
was by no means a neglected book among the Roman Catholics ; but 
the discussions on the Catholic Relief Bill were the main cause of 
the change of feeling towards them in the Non- Conforming body, 
together with the changed posture of European politics. Almost 
the whole body of the old Dissenters of England joined in petitions 
in favour of their relief. 



252 



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June, 1673, he enters in his note-books that he had 
friends visiting him from the neighbourhood of Wood- 
kirk, when John Coppendale, one of them, told him that 
of the persons who had been lately admitted into the 
Independent Church at Topcliffe, of which Mr. Marshall 
was then the pastor, most of them had declared in their 
experience, that the first work upon their minds was by 
his ministry, when they heard him in the " sad and si- 
lencing times." He takes occasion from this to remark, 
that there were long seasons of danger in those times, 
when no minister in those parts, except himself, dared 
to preach. 

He notices also, about the same time, what he calls 
" a sweet and signal return of prayer." — " Mr. Samuel 
Bayley, the only son of my good old friend Samuel Bay- 
ley of Allerton in Bradford parish, a solid, gracious, 
useful, peaceable, tender-hearted Christian as any I have 
known ; I have been with him at many a sweet day of 
prayer ; and a few days before he died we were at a pri- 
vate fast together in Ovenden-wood ; and oh ! oh ! how 
melting and affectionate was his heart for his children, 
a son and daughter, both here this day ! The daughter 
is married to John Brooksbank of Elland, a godly man. 
The son preached with me this day ; prayed admirably 
well ; preached a most solid experimental sermon con- 
cerning Christ's withdrawing from souls, from Canticles 
iii, 1 ; handled it exceedingly profitably and awakeningly 
to sinners. I succeeded, and my heart was much melted ; 
and in the beginning of prayer God helped my expres- 
sions and affections in breaking forth into God's praises 
for his infinite mercy in returning an answer to prayer, 
which had influence upon my following discourse, and 
animated my hopes for my children. This was Mid- 
summer-day, June 24, 1673, in my house." 

The allusion here to his own sons arises out of the 
determination which he had now formed to bring them 
both up to the Non-Conforming ministry. Two other 
ministers in his neighbourhood, his intimate friends, did 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



253 



the same, namely, Mr. Richardson of Lassel-hall, and 
Mr. Kirby of Wakefield, who had given to his only son 
the name of God's-gift, which sounds harsher in English 
than the corresponding and well-known name of Diodati 
does in the Italian. A lay-friend, Mr. Cotton, also de- 
voted one of his sons at this time to the Non-Conform- 
ing ministry. Why they were not sent at once to Mr. 
Frankland, I do not well understand ; but on some in- 
ducement, Mr. Hey wood, Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Cot- 
ton sent at first their sons to a more distant academy, 
namely, that which Mr. Hickman had established at 
Dusthorpe, near Broomsgrove, in Worcestershire # . The 
party set out on Monday, May 19, 1673. 

An important step like this was not taken without 
previous religious solemnities : — " My sons being to go 
abroad for learning next week, I took them with me to 
three private days this week. One was at Halifax, May 
14 ; at home, May 15 ; the last at Mr. Dawson's, May 
16. But Thursday, at home, was such a day as we 
have seldom had. I purposely appointed it to seek God 
in their behalf, and God wonderfully helped all his ser- 
vants to plead for them. About the middle of the day 
I called them both forth before the company ; asked 
them several questions, as, What calling they chose ? 
With tears they both answered, ' The ministry.' I asked 
them, For what end? they might suffer persecution ; must 
not dream of honour therein, and to live like gentlemen, 
&c. They told me, ( Their only end was to glorify God 

* Mr. Hickman, who was a bachelor of divinity and a celebrated 
preacher at Oxford, had been turned out of a fellowship of Magda- 
lene College. He was the author of many controversial works, among 
which is one entitled Laudensium Apostasia, showing that many Di- 
vines are fallen from the doctrine received in the Church of England, 
4to, 1660. He wrote the Apologia pro Ministris in- Anglid vulgb 
Non- Conformistis , an. 1662, Aug. 24, die Bartholomeo dicto, ejectis, 
&c, 12mo, 1664. This was intended to circulate on the continent 
among the foreign Protestants. After continuing his academy for 
some years he retired to Holland, where he was minister of the Eng- 
lish congregation at Leyden. 



254 



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and win souls.' I marked John's words : he said, ' He 
desired to do God more service than any of his ancestors.' 
I asked them, What they desired Mr. Dawson and the rest 
of God's servants might pray to God for on their behalf? 
They spoke openly, both of them. Eliezer spoke first, 
and said, ' That God would give them grace and gifts, 
forgive the sins of their childhood and loss of time ; 
would make them studious, keep them from temptation 
and sinful company.' John's answer was muchwhat of 
that nature, They both wept exceedingly ; tears dropped 
down apace ; the whole company wept. Then I gave 
them up solemnly to God in his work. They that went 
to prayer read also a scripture. W. B. read 1 Samuel i, 
of dedicating Samuel to God ; Mr. Dawson read Gene- 
sis xxviii, of Isaac's sending away his son Jacob ; R. R. 
read Proverbs iii, about getting wisdom ; Mr. Hodgson 
read the latter end of Genesis xlviii, from verse 8 to the 
end, and when he came to those words, verse 16, ' The 
Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads,' 
tears stopped him ; we all wept. The scripture I read, 
and expounded briefly, was 1 Chronicles xx, of Solo- 
mon's charge by David about building the temple. In 
prayer God helped all ; but God wrought strangely in 
my heart : oh, what a flood of tears ! what pleadings 
with God ! I can scarce remember the like. Blessed be 
God ! it's a token for good. At night, after the young 
men's conference, I set my two sons a praying. Eliezer 
began, and wept and prayed very feelingly ; but John 
exceeded, both in strong scriptural expostulations,, and 
sobbing and weeping, that sometimes he could hardly 
speak : and such an evening of such a day I have seldom 
had in all my life. I watch to ' hear what the Lord will 
speak' to all these ; surely 4 he will speak peace ;' but oh, 
that I and mine might ' not return to folly ! ' On Friday, 
May 16, Mr. Dawson had appointed a day of thanks- 
giving the day after this sweet fast ; Mr. Bentley and he 
and I kept the day, with many more ; and God gra- 
ciously helped our hearts, though I had not such strange 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



255 



motions and affections as the day before ; yet I look 
upon this as a pledge and presage of occasions of thank- 
fulness to God in future times, yea, a kind of antedating 
and anticipating a day of rejoicing in the mercies begged 
of God the day before. And, as we had the ordinance 
of baptism, so they named the child Eliezer*, ' God is my 
help,' after my younger son's name." 

In this year Mr. Joshua Horton, whose name has 
been mentioned as a member of Mr. Root's church, but 
afterwards joining Mr. Hey wood, built a meeting-house 
for the Non-Conformists in or near Sowerby in this 
parish, at a place called Quarry-hill, for which he ob- 
tained a license by Mr. Heywood's assistance. It was 
to be supplied with services by four of the neighbouring 
ministers, namely, Mr. Heywood, Mr. Bentley, Mr. Daw- 
son, and Mr. Timothy Root. It was opened on Tuesday, 
May 6, and Mr. Horton intended that there should be a 
Tuesday lecture preached in it. This measure excited 
strong feeling in the mind of Dr. Hooke, for Mr. Horton 
was a very principal person in his parish, a justice of the 
peace, and a man of 1000Z. a-year estate f. Dr. Hooke 
thought it his duty to interpose, and the first step which 
he took was to address to Mr. Horton the following let- 
ter, of which neither the temper nor the style is much to 
be admired : — 

* The sons of Mr. Dawson, as I find in some of the family pa- 
pers, were named Abraham, Joseph, Obadiah, Eliezer, Samuel, and 
Eli, all Old Testament names, according to the custom of the parish. 
Abraham, Joseph, and Eli were all Non-Conforming ministers. 
Eliezer, who was born on the 9th of May, 1673, and whose baptism 
is noticed in the text, did not maintain the reputation of this family 
for virtuous and religious habits. He was living in 1735, when I 
find one of his nieces, the daughter of his brother Joseph Dawson, 
pathetically lamenting his folly, and interceding with God for him : 
" Thou knowest he is the son of thy faithful servant, and the son of 
thy handmaid ! " 

t Mr. Horton of Sowerby was a brother of William Horton of 
Howroyd. His eldest son removed to Chaderton in Lancashire, and 
was the grandfather of William Horton of that place, who was 
created a baronet in 1764. 



256 



THE LIFE OF 



" Sir, — I hoped to have met you with your minister 
on Wednesday at our church, and after with your bre- 
thren, the feoffees of Mr. Nathaniel Waterhouse, at the 
lecturer's house ; but I suppose you were so full with 
the four hours' exercise at the dedication of your new- 
built cottage, as you formerly called it, now turned into 
a synagogue, that you could not digest the prayers of 
our church and a sermon there the next day. Had I 
seen you then, or foreseen your designed meeting, I 
should have been so bold (as my pastoral duty binds 
me) to have asked your authority. To that end I was 
to wait on you at your inn to-day, but you being gone 
home, I sent after you this messenger on the same er- 
rand. If you have authority, I desire you to show it, 
and that before the next meeting (which I hear is on 
Tuesday next), and T have done. If you have not, I 
request you to desist, your act (however you judge it) 
being a sin, a scandal, a schism, a danger ; and so you 
will find perhaps sooner than you expect. If you shall 
please in thankfulness to God, who hath increased your 
estate, to express your pious charity, you may do it 
more piously in making an addition to the chapel of 
Sowerby. I give you this timely intimation and caution 
in Christian charity, and expect your present answer." 

Mr. Horton wrote a temperate reply, in w T hich he 
spoke of God's command for preaching the word, in 
season and out of season, of the King's Indulgence and 
of the license which he had obtained for the place ; and 
declaring that what he had done was not in opposition 
to, nor prejudice of, the public ordinance of the Lord's 
Day, to which he bore a due reverence, and at which he 
gave attendance, but to redeem a little time for God's 
service and the good of souls ; and withal, reminding 
the vicar that, if he rightly considered the great abound- 
ing of sin and necessity of sinners, he would see a need 
of obeying that command, " Cry aloud, spare not," &c, 
and would thank God for such as would help in that 
good work. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



257 



Mr. Horton read this letter before it was sent, to the 
society at Northowram, the day of the Lord's Supper 
being administered happening to be at the time. Mr. 
Horton's practice at that time was to attend the services 
at the public chapel at Sowerby, except on the Sundays 
which were perhaps once a month, when he went to hear 
Mr. Heywood at Northowram. His contribution to Mr. 
Booker, the public minister, was eight pounds per an- 
num, and he gave ten shillings to the minister for each 
of the services in his own meeting-place. 

It was not in Dr. Hooke's power to prevent Mr. 
Horton from doing what appeared to him right in this 
particular ; but not long after he took an opportunity of 
annoying Mr. Horton, in a way which is an early, and may 
be the first instance, of the provisions of the Test Act be- 
ing brought to bear against the Non-Conformists. He 
insisted on the Sacrament being taken kneeling, though 
this was generally dispensed with by the clergy of that 
time, out of deference to the scruples of their Puritan 
parishioners. Dr. Hooke caused it to be understood that 
he had determined to grant no certificate of the ordi- 
nance having been received to any person who did not 
kneel ; and at the same time insisted upon the go- 
vernors of the Grammar-school at Halifax, of whom 
Mr. Horton was one, qualifying under the Act. This 
appears to have been a very unreasonable extension of the 
scope of the Act. Some of the governors did thus qua- 
lify, but others refused ; and Dr. Hooke, in still greater 
irritation, inveighed, in the pulpit of the church of Hali- 
fax, against preaching in houses, as a dishonour to God, 
and tending to bring preaching into contempt. 

Dr. Hooke seemed determined at this time to act 
with all possible hostility against the Non-Conformists. 
" Monday morning, November 10, 1673, there came an 
apparitor from York, and another from Halifax, and 
apprehended James Brooksbank and Robert Ramsden, 
two of our members, upon a writ de Excommunicato 
capiendo ; the occasion whereof was. their refusing to 



258 



THE LIFE OF 



take the churchwardens' oath ; though they faithfully 
served the office. When they were excommunicated, as 
they call it, they consulted with us what to do, fearing 
this capias. We desired them to send to York and get 
it off, if a little money would do it ; hut Dr. Hooke hath 
put a bar to that, so that it could not be done, so that 
it ran up to this ; and this day, November 1 1 , they are 
gone towards York Castle, together with one Joshua 
Smith of Sowerby, a Quaker, upon the same account ; 
which they must do, unless they would have given eight 
pounds a piece for their release God Almighty go with 
them ! We had a solemn day of prayer at William 
Clay's the same day they were taken, and so sent them 
away with prayer." They did not, however, find their 
way into the cells of the Castle, for, on their arrival at 
York, they consented to pay six pounds each, and were 
released. 

In the midst of these heats the Duke of Buckingham 
visited Halifax. He was raising recruits for the army. 
Dr. Hooke was absent, being at Ripon, preaching in his 
prebendal course. The duke attended the church on the 
Sunday, when the lecturer preached, but gave so little 
satisfaction, that in the afternoon the duke refused to 
go, and walked up to the Gibbet. He lodged at the 
house of Dr. Maud, of whom he inquired if there were 
any Non-Conformists in those parts, and being answered 
" Many," he said it was the king's pleasure that they 
should have their liberty. Henry Lord Fairfax was with 
him, to whom Mr. Bentley communicated Dr. Hooke's 
treatment of the Non-Conformists ; who said, that if Dr. 
Hooke had been at home, the duke would certainly have 
given him a rebuke, as he had lately done to Mr. Cooke 
at Leeds, when he complained to him of the meetings of 
fanatics. The duke appears to have allowed himself to 
use very violent language when speaking with clergymen 
on this subject. 

This view of the state of the parish of Halifax during 
the existence of the king's Licenses cannot be looked at 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



259 



without great concern. It shows, that if good was done 
hy the irregular ministrations of such men as Mr. Hey 
wood, that the good did not come unattended with mo- 
ral as well as physical evil : and we may learn from it 
the evil of laying a disproportionate stress on peculiarities 
of opinion in respect of religious faith and practice, as 
tending to social disunion and the evils we have contem- 
plated ; and, on the other hand, the wisdom of exercising 
the utmost forbearance in those in whom any portion of 
the public power is vested, in the treatment of those who 
deem themselves, rightly or wrongly, bound to take any 
peculiar course of religious practice. 

In the August of this year Mr. Heywood was at York, 
and his brief notes of what he did on this visit afford us 
a glimpse of what the Non-Conformists of that city 
were doing. He was a visitor at the hous^ of Sir John 
Hewley ; heard Mr. Williams, one of the ejected minis- 
ters, at Lady Watson's, on the 7th ; preached on the 
next day with Mr. Ward, another ejected minister, at 
his meeting-place at Mr. Andrew Taylor's, and again on 
Sunday, in the afternoon. So that we see Non-Con- 
formity active, and the work countenanced by persons 
of consideration. 

1674. 

This year passed as the preceding. The king's In- 
dulgence was still continued ; but still the enemies of 
Non-Conformity found out means to annoy, and were 
the more eager against them as they saw the number 
of separate congregations increasing everywhere. We 
have at this time the punctual relation by Mr. Heywood 
of every day's occurrences. 

On March 25, he preached " at Mill-hill in Leeds." 
At this newly-erected chapel there were at first four mi- 
nisters, two of whom, Mr. Sale and Mr. Sharp, have 
already been frequently mentioned. The other two were 
Mr. Cornelius Todd, son of Mr. Robert Todd, who had 
been a minister at Leeds in the Commonwealth-times, 

s 2 



260 



THE LIFE OF 



and Mr. Richard Stretton, who had been chaplain to Tho- 
mas Lord Fairfax, and who was through life, the greater 
part of which was spent in London, one of the most 
active and influential managers of the affairs of Non- 
Conformity. But the Non-Conformists of Leeds were 
not allowed, even in the times of the Indulgence, to 
proceed without molestation. — "We had the case of 
Leeds much upon our hearts to God in prayer, be- 
cause it is the most considerable place in these parts, 
and God hath graciously brought them off, indeed 
wonderfully, after some shocks. Two bailiffs informed 
against fifty persons being at Mill-hill May 24, and 
June 7, 1674, but were baffled; indicted for perjury; 
bill found at Leeds Sessions and York Assizes ; warrants 
out for them. Still their enemies were busy ; prevailed 
with the mayor to send six officers to the meeting-place, 
who came August 26 ; Mr. Todd was preaching. The 
constable said the mayor charged them to desist that 
work in that place : Mr. Todd boldly replied, ' Are you 
not Christians ? And surely you will not be worse to us 
than heathens were to Paul, who had liberty to preach 
the Gospel in heathen Rome.' They went away. We, 
hearing that the archbishop was at Leeds, were afraid of 
some combinations against them. We earnestly prayed 
for them August 24, being Bartholomew's Day. The 
day after we had account of their full liberty still ; even 
the Lord's Day the bishop was at Leeds." 

Mr. Heywood experienced a similar interruption when 
preaching at Alverthorpe, September 20. Three bailiffs 
came in the morning, and in the afternoon many pro- 
fane persons from Wakefield, among whom was u a wild 
young scholar, one Ratcliffe," (who must have been he 
who was afterwards the celebrated physician of that 
name) and who afterwards entertained his riotous com- 
panions with mimicry of Mr. Heywood's sermon and 
the delivery of it. On November 13, Mr. Copley and 
Mr. Whyte held a private Sessions at Wakefield, the only 
business at which was to summon Mr. Heywood and 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



261 



forty persons of the Alverthorpe congregation, including 
Mr. Dyneley and Mr. Kirk, to convict them under the 
Conventicle Act. The two justices having sat above 
half an hour, and none of the persons summoned appear- 
ing, they adjourned the Sessions, and meeting some of 
the parties on the road, spake courteously to them. 
This Mr. Heywood attributes to the conduct of the 
Duke of Buckingham, who had rebuked Mr. Copley the 
Saturday before at Leeds for troubling his neighbours. 
Sir John Armitage, Sir John Kay and Mr. Benson had 
refused to attend this Sessions. 

The congregation at Alverthorpe was the same which 
afterwards met at a chapel in Wakefield. It had been 
regularly constituted some months before, but, even at 
this early period, the inconvenience of popular election 
of a minister began to be felt. " The inhabitants met 
about choice of a minister ; and though in the beginning 
the storm of unruly passion grew high amongst them, yet 
towards the close their spirits were so sweetly calmed, 
that they all condescended to one thing ; agreed lovingly, 
and parted good friends." This was a little before June 
the 28th, on which day Mr. Heywood preached to them, 
recommending peace. 

On the 30th of June he preached in Lady Rodes' 
chapel at Great Houghton, in company with Mr. Richard- 
son. " I began concerning ' the Root of the Matter;' 
he went on from Colossians i, 20, on ' Fruitfulness in 
every good work.' God ordered our subjects as if we had 
purposely cast them into the same mould." 

Dr. Hooke continued his opposition. (i About July 
20, 1674, there came out an order from the archbishop, 
some say of the procurement of Dr. Hooke, to cause the 
old churchwardens of last year, and now of this, to join 
together and present all their names through the parishes 
as did not receive the Sacrament at church. A great 
bustle they made about it ; several meetings, but could do 
nothing. The doctor put them on, but, at the latter end, 
when he saw he could not effect any thing, he told the 



262 



THE LIFE OF 



old officers plainly, that if they made any other present- 
ments they were perjured, having given in the former 
upon oath. So they gave their five shillings a-piece to 
Dr. Hooke and Thomas Cockcroft, to bring them off 
with the spiritual court." 

This was a year of great mortality among the minis- 
ters of Mr. Hey wood's acquaintance, on both sides of the 
mountains. " God hath sadly broken us by death of 
several Non-Conforming ministers ; Mr. Bath of Roch- 
dale, Mr. Shelmerdine of Mottram, and Mr. Jones of 
Eccles." In Yorkshire there died, Mr. Clayton of Ro- 
th erham, Mr. Birkbeck of Sheffield, Mr. Cart of Hans- 
worth, and Mr. Witton of Thornhill. Mr. Clayton died 
on June 13, after a very short illness, having been out of 
his house the day before, and the preceding day having 
visited Mr. Birkbeck at Sheffield. He was born, lived 
and died at Rotherham. Mr. Birkbeck followed him on 
the 8th of July, and was buried in the churchyard at 
Sheffield on the 10th, on which occasion Mr. Bloom 
preached. The stone which covers his grave was in ex- 
istence within these few years, but searching for it lately 
in that overcrowded cemetery, it was gone, with three 
or four other gravestones having upon them names of 
ministers who were ejected. Mr. Cart died at the 
beginning of September. He is described hy Mr. 
Hey wood as <c a great scholar, a good man, a good 
preacher," and he says, "There is great loss of him, 
being a useful man in those parts." There is a small 
collection of tombs of this family in the churchyard of 
Hansworth, which living he had resigned. Mr. Witton 
had been rector of Thornhill. He had not preached 
after his ejection, being rich, yet had been of great use 
for his poor brethren's supply. The reader will find 
more respecting all these ministers in Dr. Calamy's in- 
valuable work. 

Two events of a domestic nature occurring in this 
year remain to be mentioned. 

Mr, Heywood's two sons, having been not quite a year 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



263 



with Mr. Hickman, were recalled home, and transferred 
to Mr. Frankland's academy. This appears to have been 
early in the year. On the 23rd of April Mr. Hey wood 
was with Mr. Richardson at Lassel-hall, consulting about 
Mr. Richardson's son joining his sons at Mr. Frank- 
land's, a design which Mr. Heywood did not heartily 
approve, thinking that the son of Mr. Richardson had 
done his sons no good at Mr. Hickman's. The two 
Heywoods, the younger Richardson, Thomas Cotton and 
God's-gift Kirby entered Frankland's academy nearly at 
the same time, all being destined for the ministry. They 
were all there on the 29th of July, when Mr. Heywood 
met Mr. Kirby, Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Wright, a 
Nottinghamshire minister, who was nearly related to 
the family of Cotton, at Mr. Cotton's house at Denby, 
to spend part of the day in prayer in behalf of their 
five sons at Mr. Frankland's . — " Oh how earnestly 
did God help our hearts !" They alluded in their prayers 
to the opposition which was made to Mr. Frankland, 
and Mr. Heywood recorded among his " Returns of 
Prayer," that he received intelligence soon after of the 
cessation of this opposition. 

The other event is the marriage of the servant Martha 
Bairstow, July 3, which was kept as a solemn day. She had 
lived with him, he says, sixteen years, and had been ex- 
ceedingly faithful, and careful of him and his, afflicted 
with him in all his afflictions, and sharing with him in 
all conditions. " My heart was much affected in secret 
prayer ; but, in the family, affections ran out into pas- 
sion in reading, Genesis xxiv, of Abraham's faithful ser- 
vant and Rebecca parting from home." Such glimpses 
of the manner of life of our forefathers are as pleasing 
as they are rare # . 

* Mr. Heywood gives an account of an event which occurred at 
York about this time, in which the Duke of Buckingham was sup- 
posed to have more to do than appears in Mr. Heywood's narrative, 
circumstantial as it is. The story is in itself remarkable, and as it 
also illustrates the sentiments of Mr. Heywood respecting the deaths 



264 



THE LIFE OF 



of persecutors, I give it a place in these pages. It is hardly neces- 
sary to add that the house at York in which the Duke of Bucking- 
ham at this time resided, had been the Fairfaxes' ; and that the de- 
scendants of Mr. Aislaby succeeded the Mallorys in the possession 
of the fine estate of Studley. 

" Mr. George Aislaby, the register of the spiritual court at York, 
did challenge Mr. Jonathan Jennings to a single duel, by whom he 
was slain, on Jan. 10, 1675, being Lord's Day. The occasion was 
this : the Duke of Buckingham living at his own house at York 
hath several masks, plays, interludes, dancings, at which, a day or 
two before, was, amongst the rest, Sir John Mallory's daughter, 
living with Mr. Aislaby, whose wife was her own sister. They 
stayed at the masking very late at night. Mr. Aislaby and his 
family went to bed, left a man up to wait for his sister's coming 
home and open the gates. The man went to the duke's house to 
meet them, but missed them, for Mr. Jon. Jennings (Sir Edward 
Jennings' brother, of Ilipon) had taken her into his coach. They 
coming to the gates in the man's absence, knocked, but got not ad- 
mitted, whereupon Mr. Jennings takes her to his brother-in-law's, 
Dr. Watkinson's, house, where he lodged. The day after Mr. Aislaby 
and Mr. Jennings met together; had some words about it; were 
sharp ; Mr. Jennings told him it was hard Sir John Mallory's daugh- 
ter must wait at George Aislaby's gates and not be admitted. It ran 
so high, that Mr. Jennings told him he was the scum of the country. 
This stuck upon Mr. Aislaby's big spirit. Thereupon, after he had 
been to church in the forenoon, on Sabbath Day noon, Jan. 10, 1675, 
he sent a challenge to Mr. Jennings, charged the servant to deliver 
it to his own hands, but he, being at dinner, could not but give it 
to one of the servants. He inquired what answer he brought, who 
telling him ' None,' sent him again to him, commanding him to bring 
a positive answer. Having delivered the note, Mr. Jennings said, ' Go, 
tell your master I will wait upon him presently.' The place was called 
Pen-roes, without Boulen-bar [Bowtham-bar] . The sign was, the toll- 
ing of the bell to church. Mr. Jennings took a boy with him, as though 
he would walk, who directed him to that place, or near it, and sent 
him back, none suspecting the business. Mr. Aislaby kissed his wife 
when he went out. She said, ' Love, will you not go to church ?' 
e Yes,' said he, 'but not to the church 3'ou go to;' so went out. 
They met ; Mr. Aislaby was come first ; they fell to it with their 
swords ; Mr. Jennings run him up the right arm ; his body was un- 
touched ; so many veins being cut he bled excessively. Mr. Jennings 
led him back by the arm, then left him ; went and told his servants 
to go and fetch their master ; who made ready his coach ; got him 
into it. The last words he was heard speak were, ' I had him once 
in my power ;" so died. By that time he was got home, his wife, 
being Sir John Mallory's daughter, came to the coach, being big 
with the twelfth child, fell down in a s wound. He was searched 
by surgeons, who had no hurt upon his body, but arms. Mr. Jen- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



265 



nings was at Dr. Watkinson's ; when he heard it was ready to tear 
the flesh off himself; when recovering, he got the duke's coach, 
went out of town ; is gone straight to London, post, to beg his par- 
don. The occasion and beginning of this might be a comedy, but 
the end is a tragedy. — This George Aislaby was servant to one 
Turbot, register of the spiritual court in the former bishop's days, 
and when his master died he married his mistress, had by her 
20,000/., and having the books, &c, was put into the same office, 
since the bishop's government was restored, and hath made a won- 
derful improvement of it; for besides the place, which is worth 
500/. per annum, he had much increased it by laying capiases for 
excommunicated persons through the countiy, giving some thirty or 
forty shillings for a capias, and if the bailiffs took the persons, made 
them pay five pounds, or six, or eight, or some ten pounds a-piece, 
or else go to prison. This hath been a gainful trade, doubling, yea 
trebling, his money in a year; so by these shifts he hath gotten 2000/. 
a-year, and left it all in an instant ; being prodigal of his blood, could 
not bear an affront. It is confidently said that he was engaged in 
at least twelve duels formerly in Ireland, which he would not manage 
without the guilt of some blood, which God hath righteously re- 
turned upon his own head; by such a hand of their own party as 
God singled out. However, this violent persecution of God's people 
for conscience sake was a sin which God will seldom suffer to pass 
unrevenged. I have had suspensions, citations, excommunications, 
against myself, all under his hand. Lord, teach this generation 
something by it. Mr. Jennings took two men ; went to the high 
sheriff ; they were bound with him in 500/. a-piece for his appear- 
ance at the Assizes, and got his pardon from the king, and walked 
up and down York streets with confidence." 



266 



THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER XIII. 
1675—1682. 

THE LICENSES WITHDRAWN. MR. HEYWOOD CONTINUES TO PREACH 

AS USUAL. SUCCEEDS TO SOME FAMILY PROPERTY. DEATHS OF 

MR. COTTON ; MR. BENTLEY ; MR. BAYLEY. BURIAL GROUND AT 

MORLEY. WISH OF THE PEOPLE FOR HIS RETURN TO THE PUBLIC 

CHAPEL AT COLEY. MR. KTRBY. HIS SONS GO TO FINISH THEIR 

STUDIES AT EDINBURGH. DEATHS OF HIS FATHER, SISTER, FATHER- 
IN-LAW AND BROTHER, IN ONE YEAR. NOTICE OF MR. NATHANIEL 

HEYWOOD. FURTHER ITINERANT LABOURS. RISE OF THE BAPTIST 

CONGREGATIONS AROUND MR. HEYWOOD. DEATH OF SIR JOHN 

ARMITAGE. COMMENCEMENT OF A REGULAR SYSTEM OF ORDINA- 
TION IN THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE. MINUTE ACCOUNT OF 

THE FIRST OF THESE SERVICES. FURTHER PREACHING TOURS. 

RECEIVES A VISIT FROM LORD RUTHERFORD. CONNEXION BE- 
TWEEN THE SCOTCH AND ENGLISH PRESBYTERIANS. THE LAM- 
BERTS. DEATH OF MR. HORTON. — MR. HEYWOOD TAKEN BEFORE 

MR. ENTWISTLE FOR PREACHING AT SHAW-CHAPEL. MR. ELIEZER 

HEYWOOD BECOMES CHAPLAIN TO MR. TAYLOR OF WALLINGWELLS. 
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MR. HANCOCK AND MR. BLOOM. DIF- 
FERENCES IN MR. WHITEHURST'S CONGREGATION. PUBLISHES HIS 

LIFE IN GOB'S FAVOUR. EXCOMMUNICATED AGAIN. VARIOUS OR- 
DINATIONS. MR. TIMOTHY JOLLIE. MR. NOBLE. MR. JOHN HEY- 
WOOD. THE DROUGHT OF 1681. DEATH OF MR. MARSDEN. 

1675. 

In the February of this year the king's Declaration for 
Indulgence was recalled, and things reverted to the state 
in which they were before March 15, 1672. 

Of the circumstances under which Mr. Hey wood re- 
ceived information of this important change, he gives 
the following account 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



267 



" Tuesday, February 9, 1675, being invited to preach 
at the new meeting-place at Leeds, I set from home. 
Had studied, as I conceived, a good sermon, and pleased 
myself in imagining what an auditory I should have the 
day after ; what content I should give to good people ; 
how seasonable the text and subject would be, being 
Revel, ii, 4, 5, of Losing first love, God removing Can- 
dlestick, there being danger of it. As I rode over 
Hardger Moor I checked and challenged myself for these 
proud conceits ; told the Lord how just he would be 
(and endeavoured to wean my mind to content) if he 
should prevent my preaching it, or send wicked men to 
disturb ; or shame me, by withdrawing from me. When 
I came as far as Morley, I met A. C, a friend, on the 
road, who showed me the king's Order for recalling 
Licenses and suppressing meetings ; and when I came 
to Leeds we had a meeting at Mr. Stretton's house, to 
consult about my preaching. Mr. Thoresby, Mr. Dickson, 
Mr. Hickson, Mr. Wilson, Mr.Iveson, Mr. Milner # , and 
others did all judge it expedient to forbear ; partly because 
it was an Order, and so in force as soon as published 
without proclamation ; partly because of the aldermen's 
rage, being exasperated by the Non-Conformists' con- 
flict with them and conquest of them, but especially be- 
cause they had told the mayor and aldermen that if the 
king called in the Licenses they would cease. So I for- 
bore preaching in public, yet preached my sermon in 
private, at Mr. Stretton's house, that night." 

He dismissed his own congregation at Northowram. 

" The most heart-melting day and work that ever I 
can remember was February 14, "J 5, the Lord's Day. 
The week before we received the king's Order to call 
in his Licenses, and it was judged fit that we should 
cease as to that public way of preaching openly to all. 

* These are names of families most of which continued to be of 
principal account among the burgery of Leeds for a century after 
this time ; but few of them remained Non- Conformists long after 
the accession of the house of Hanover. 



268 



THE LIFE OF 



I took my solemn farewell upon that Lord's Day, preach- 
ing on Revel, ii, 4, 5, of Removing the Candlestick, and 
in the close dismissed that meeting, gave my reasons, 
some advice to them. God caused abundant affections, 
floods of tears, such as I never had experience of in all 
my life in public ; promising my best assistance to them 
all in private. And oh that God would set the stamp of 
his grace and Spirit upon the world's affections ! Who 
knows what good may be done by that closing sermon? 
However, these affections are a token for good, and pre- 
sage the Lord's gracious return." 

Mr. Heyw T ood gives a summary of his reasons for 
desisting to preach publicly : — " (1.) because he w T ould 
comply with the will of the sovereign, that men may be 
convinced that they were of the ' peaceable in the land,' 
and to take off the imputation of sedition ; (2.) because 
Parliament was soon to meet, and at the last session 
were taking their case into consideration, and it was 
hoped, if they conducted themselves peaceably, something 
would be done for them by law ; (3.) the Licenses not 
being according to the established law of the land, but 
by the king's prerogative, it is by some feared they may 
prove of dangerous consequence, for if he may dispense 
with laws upon one account, he may also supersede 
them upon another; (4.) several ministers elsewhere 
had given over this public way of preaching by Licenses, 
especially at Leeds, that had held up valiantly, and had 
bestowed four hundred pounds in building and preparing 
a meeting- place, besides Mr. Nesse's beyond the bridge ; 
(5.) some of his brethren who had been backward in 
preaching would have censured and condemned him as 
obstructing their liberty if he had continued his work, 
as they have been apt to do, and he would not give any 
offence ; (6.) because he would not trepan or ensnare 
people, but let them know upon what terms we are now, 
that they might not lay the blame on him if hereafter 
any fine be laid upon them, but that they might know 
the worst and count the cost ; (7.) my people, most of 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



269 



them, and especially the most intelligent, advised to it, 
and judged it the most prudent course that could be 
taken, to withdraw into more retired meetings, and not 
be so public." 

Some of these reasons are not devised in quite his 
usual spirit ; and he soon found that he could not ad- 
here to his determination. Frequent religious exercises 
in company with others, in which he led the devotions 
or delivered Christian instruction, were as necessary to 
him as his daily food. "Yet though I did give this 
notice, notwithstanding, we have enjoyed several days of 
considerable liberty in my meeting-place, pretty full of 
people, and began about eight o'clock, preached till 
twelve, twice. This day, being March 21, 1674-5, I 
began half an hour after eight; had done about one." 
Towards the end of the year he writes: — "Though I 
took my leave February 14, 1675, with much affection, 
many tears, yet God was pleased to remember us. I 
observed what others did, who generally kept on their 
work in meetings. I was troubled at my cessation. 
Within two days I fell to preaching again. Many 
flocked to ordinances. God graciously helped; there 
was no danger, not a dog moving his tongue against us. 
And thus we have continued in as full assemblies as 
formerly ail the summer, and thus far of the winter, till 
this day, which is December 12, 1675, in which time 
many [public] ministers have been at Coley, but settled 
not. The best minister, a Scotchman, died, was buried 
December 9, '75 # . Since which the heads of the cha- 
pelry of Coley have been consulting to give me a call to 
preach in public, and say things will not go right till I 
be brought to it again. What God will do in these 

* Mr. Andrew Lowthian, introduced by Dr. Hooke on the disap- 
pearance of Mr. Bramley. He had been curate to the Dean of Dur- 
ham at a country-living, where his stipend was six shillings a week, 
not " forty pounds a-year," but something less than sixteen. He 
came to Coley August 9, 1674, and died of a fever 6th of Dec, 1675. 
The parishioners of Coley placed a stone, with an inscription to his 
memory, at the place where he was interred in Halifax churchyard. 



270 



THE LIFE OF 



matters I know not." So that his four years ministra- 
tion as a licensed Separatist had not weakened his regard 
for the principle of a National Church. 

Again: — "Though there are threatenings on all 
hands as to our liberty, and though 'tis said four hun- 
dred persons are summoned to appear at Pontefract Ses- 
sions, this week, upon an indictment founded on an Act 
in the 33rd of Elizabeth, for not coming to church, and 
though I had, in a sort, taken my leave of public work 
February 14, yet yesterday, being April II, '75, and 
more days since, I did preach in my meeting-place ; had 
four hundred hearers, much what as great an assembly 
as formerly; enjoyed the Lord's Supper." 

In this year Mr. Heywood came, very unexpectedly, 
into the possession, subject only to the life of his father, 
who was then near eighty years of age, of an estate at 
Little Lever, of the value of twenty pounds a-year. It 
came to him, in pursuance of family settlements, by the 
death of his great nephew, the only son of Richard the 
only son of John Heywood, his eldest brother, who died 
beyond sea. 

In this year died Mr. William Cotton, one of Mr. 
Heywood's principal friends, at whose house he had kept 
many fasts and thanksgiving days. Mr. Cotton was a 
great iron-master, living in various places in the vicinity 
of Silkston and Peniston, but his posterity became set- 
tled on an estate called The Hague, in the parish of 
Darton, in the same neighbourhood, where they were 
Non-Conformists as long as the name continued. He 
was buried at Peniston on March 17, 1675. " We were 
eight Non-Conformist ministers at his funeral ; great 
lamentation." 

And in this year also died two neighbouring minis- 
ters ; Mr. Eli Bentley of Halifax on August 2, and Mr. 
13 ay ley of Morley on the 5th of December. The last was 
an event which was a subject of very general lamenta- 
tion, and a particular grief to Mr. Heywood. We have 
seen the terms in which he lately wrote of him. Mr. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



271 



Heywood was desired to preach at his funeral, and did 
so. It was fixed for Wednesday, December 8 : — " I had 
to preach both Tuesday and Thursday ;" on the Monday 
when he received the invitation, — " I was not satisfied 
what text to take any of those days. The places were 
distant, Bingley, Morley, Sowerby. I knew not how to 
dispatch all, for I was loth to disappoint any of these 
places." He preached at all of them. 

I have seen a fair copy of the sermon which he 
preached at Mr. Bayley's funeral, transcribed in his own 
hand for the use of Mrs, Mary Drake of Pontefract, who 
was Mr. Bayley's mother, and who lost her daughter, 
Mrs. Brooksbank # , very soon afterwards. We collect 
from it concerning Mr. Bayley, that he was one of the 
first persons educated for the ministry among the Non- 
Conformists after the Uniformity Act. He was " trained 
at the feet of a learned Gamaliel f, and, after a short trial 
of his spirit, gifts and conversation, he was unanimously 
chosen pastor to that goodly flock at TopclhTe, from 
which God had removed his servant but a little before |." 
This was a Congregational or Independent church, but 
Mr. Heywood says that Mr. Bayley took the charge of it, 
though of Presbyterian sentiments, taking it in the Con- 
gregational manner, and waving, for a time, Presbyterian 
ordination. He continued the pastor for three years and 
a half, and died at the age of twenty-seven. Besides his 
pastoral duties at TopclhTe, he set up a monthly exercise 
at Morley, in which he invited neighbouring ministers 
to engage, of whom Mr. Heywood was one, giving them 
entertainment and encouragement, being rich and cha- 
ritable. He was accounted the chief of the Congrega- 
tional ministers in Yorkshire, and much advantage was 

* The house of the Brooksbanks was at Elland, in the parish of 
Halifax, where they founded a dissenting chapel and a school. 

t Here is probably an equivoque ; and the intention of pointing 
out Mr. Gamaliel Marsden, who, after his ejectment in the parish 
of Halifax, educated a few persons for the ministry. 

t That is, Christopher Marshall, an ejected minister, who died in 
February, 1673. 



272 



THE LIFE OF 



hoped from his influence in healing the differences 
among dissenting brethren. " His person was amiable ; 
his spirit moderate ; his preaching profitable, and won- 
derfully taking, tender and piercing ; his carriage affable 
and winning." The stone which covers his remains in 
the burial-ground at Morley still exists # . 

1676. 

Early in this year the impossible scheme for having 
Mr. Heywood return to his old station of curate of 
Coley was renewed, and some steps were taken to effect 
it: — " On Monday, being January 10, 1676, there was 
a meeting of the townsmen to pay Captain Lister Lord 
Halifax's chief rents ; at which time Edward Slater had 
prepared a paper, and presented it to the inhabitants, 
expressing their desires that I might preach at the chapel. 
He desired such as were present to subscribe it, which 
they did very freely, namely, Nathan Crowther and se- 
veral others. This is wonderful, and a beginning of 
return of prayer, whatever be the issue of it. They now 

* In the inscription he is described as " Minister of the Gospel at 
Morley and Topcliffe," and, according to the custom which pre- 
vailed at Morley at the time, there are texts of Scripture engraven 
on the stone, which in this instance are Prov. xi. 30 ; Daniel xii. 3 ; 
and Revel, xiv. 13. — There are very few more interesting spots, to 
any one who takes delight in the antiquities of northern Non- Con- 
formity, than the burial-ground about the chapel at Morley ; itself 
an interesting edifice, being by far the oldest building in Yorkshire 
appropriated to Non- Conforming worship ; being, in fact, the pa- 
rochial chapel, which, suppressed, desecrated, or at least disused, 
was leased by the Saviles to Presbyterian trustees. The memorials 
remain of three of the ejected ministers, namely, Robert Pickering, 
who died in 1680; William Hawden, who died in 1699 ; and Jo- 
seph Dawson, who died in 1709. There are memorials of several of 
the Dawsons, descendants of Abraham before mentioned, the last of 
whom, Lady Loughborough, the first wife of Wedderburn, who was 
created Lord Loughborough, died in 1781. Here also lies Dorothy, 
daughter of Edmund Waller the poet, who died January 18, 1718, 
about the 60th year of her age. The present Mr. Norrisson Scatcherd 
of Morley, much to his honour, put in order many of these ancient 
grave- stones, raising several that had sunk into the earth. 



OLTVER HEYWOOD. 



273 



profess they will either have me or none at the chapel ; 
if T must not preach, it shall be vacant. This is strange, 
all things considered, that they should thus own a poor, 
despised, persecuted minister, that is cast out as a vessel 
wherein is no pleasure." We see from this, that, as to 
himself, he was perfectly willing to become again a mi- 
nister in the Church if he could only be allowed the 
license he required in respect of the services. In May, 
however, there was an end put to any such expectations, 
if any could be reasonably entertained, Mr. Hovy, a 
Northumberland man, who had been a year at Bramley, 
settling at the chapel at Coley, and continuing some 
years. He was a high Conformist # . 

In April he took a journey into Westmoreland to Mr. 
Frankland's, where he had heard that his sons were 
not conducting themselves discreetly. He found things 
better than he expectedf. On September 12 they left 
Mr. Frankland's, as did also God's-gift Kirby, w T hose 
father, Joshua Kirby of Wakefield j, died this year. They 
immediately proceeded to Edinburgh, " to take degrees." 

* The state of the chapels in the parish of Halifax at this time is 
thus represented by Mr. Heywood : — 
" 1. No lecturer at Halifax, Mr. Tenant being dead. 

2. No minister at Sowerby since Mr. Bowker. 

3. No preacher at Luddenden since Sutcliffe's turning out. 

4. No preacher at Coley since Mr. Lowthian's death, Dec. 6, 1675. 

5. No preacher at Lightcliffe since Christmas. 

6. No preacher at Rastrick above a month. 

7. No minister at Chapel-le-Breare almost a quarter. 

All these places are vacant: it's said that Bairstow and Sutcliffe 
have listed themselves soldiers under Mr. Ramsden, to go for France, 
having spent all ; run out of purse and credit ; sad things are spoken 
of them." Mr. Heywood's position naturally inclined him to take 
rather a severe view of the conduct of the Conforming ministers 
around him; but when he states facts, he may be relied on. 

t He alludes to some circumstance occurring about this time, in 
his book intitled ' The Best Entail :' — " I have found that the mis- 
carriage of my child, which is the greatest cross I ever met with, 
hath been blessed for the good of my soul." There is more to the 
same purpose. 

I Dr. Calamy gives a good account of Mr. Kirby, who was a 
Master of Arts of the University of Oxford, and the first lecturer at 



274 



THE LITE OF 



We have fewer notes of this than of any other 
year in the active period of Mr. Heywood's life ; yet 
he was quite as much employed as ever ; for, in the 
tabular synopsis which he formed year by year of his 
labours, it appears that, besides his Sunday services, he 
preached 67 week-day sermons; kept 56 fasts and 12 
days of thanksgiving ; and travelled 1052 miles. He re- 
ceived in this year for his services the sum of 78/. 2s. 1 lc/., 
of which 28Z. 9s. lOd. was contributed by those whom 
he calls his own hearers. He says it is more than he 
had received in any one year before. 

1677. 

The distinguishing circumstance of this year is the 
deaths of many near relations of Mr. Hey wood, occur- 
ring in quick succession. 

The first who died was Mr. Richard Hey wood, his 
father. Mr. Hey wood visited him on the 22nd of Fe- 
bruary. He inquired of the old man the state of his 
soul, when he made this answer: — "It is now three- 
score and four or five years since God showed me my 
woeful condition by nature, and helpt my heart to lay 
hold on Christ ; and though I have had many failings 
in the course of my life, yet I hope I can say that I ne- 
ver took my leave of Jesus Christ." Mr. Hey wood re- 
turned home the next day ; preached at home on the 

Wakefield on the foundation of Lady Cambden, with an endowment 
of 100/. a-year. He was turned out of it by the Act of Uniformity, 
and afterwards imprisoned in the Castle of York, under the Con- 
venticle Act. He died an excommunicate, and was interred in his 
own garden. His only son, God's-gift, died very early in life, but 
he had many daughters, of whose marriages and descendants a large 
and punctual account was prepared by Dr. Sutton of Leicester, a 
physician, who descended from one of them, about the year 1760. 
There were several of the Presbyterian ministers of the last century 
amongst them — Rayners, Wilsons, Suttons, Conders, together with 
the Busks and other persons, who have been supporters of the Dis- 
senting interest and honours to the Dissenting name. Dr. Sutton 
collected at the same time the poems of Mr. Kirby, of which Dr. 
Calamy speaks. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



275 



Sunday ; at John Butterworth's on Tuesday ; at Idle 
chapel on Wednesday ; came home on Thursday, when 
a messenger came to acquaint him with his father's 
death that morning, March 1. He returned with the 
messenger. The funeral was solemnized at Bolton on 
the Saturday, ' ' according to the decent and orderly 
custom of the country, my brother meeting us at Bol- 
ton." Mr. Tildesley preached the funeral sermon, from 
2 Tim. i, 12, and the day after Mr. Hey wood preached 
at the chapel in Ainsworth^. 

The next death was that of his youngest sister, Alice 
Bradley, who had married a yeoman in Ainsworth. She 
died on the 9 th of May. 

The next who died was Mr. Angier, Mr. Hey wood's 
honoured father-in-law, who died on the 1st of Septem- 
ber, and was interred with great solemnity in the public 
chapel at Denton, where he had been minister 46 years, 
having continued there undisturbed, notwithstanding all 
the severe laws to the penalties of which he was ex- 
posed. Mr. Heywood was not with him at the time of 
his death. He was sent for to visit him, and was on his 
way to Denton, when, at Rochdale, he met the messenger 
with intelligence of his death. He proceeded to Denton. 
Preached on the next day. On the 3rd was the funeral. 
Mr. Heywood wrote and printed a large account of Mr. 
Angier's life. 

But a much severer stroke in this fatal year was the 
death of his brother, Mr. Nathaniel Heywood, the mi- 
nister, who was ejected at Ormskirk, and with whom he 
had a most entire friendship through the whole of life. 
He died on the 16th of December, being only in his 
forty-fifth year. The tidings were received at North- 
owram on the 17th, when Mr. Heywood wrote thus in 

* The following is a copy of the inscription on his gravestone : — 
" Here lyeth the body of Richard Heywood of Little Lever ; who 
had followed the Lord sixty-four years in Christian profession and 
practice through various conditions : at last fell asleep, March 1, 
1676-7, in the 81st year of his age. ' There the weary be at rest.' 

T 2 



276 



THE LIFE OF 



his diary:- — " The sad tidings of my brother's death 
broke my heart; but God supported." He reached 
Ormskirk on the 19th. It was the day of the funeral, 
which appears to have been usually in those times the 
second day after the death. He was buried in an ho- 
nourable grave, in the chancel of the church of Orms- 
kirk, "in a burial-place which belongs to the ancient 
family of the Stanleys of Bickerstaff, with their free 
consent and design." Mr. Starkey preached ; and Mr. 
Starkey and Mr. Heywood lodged together that night at 
Mrs. Ashhurst's, a family between whom and the Hey- 
woods there was a close intimacy. He stayed the next 
day at Ormskirk at his sister's, counselling, comforting, 
conversing with them, and he preached in her chamber 
at night to a considerable company, on John xvii, 24. 
On the 2 1st they had a sad parting. His two sons were 
with him. 

Mr. Nathaniel Heywood was as zealous in his irre- 
gular ministrations as his brother was ; the field of his 
labours being the country round Ormskirk, but especially 
the towns of Wigan, Warrington, Liverpool, Preston and 
Eccleston. At all these places, except the last, Non-Con- 
forming congregations arose, in part, at least, as the effect 
of his labours. When the king's Declaration came out, 
he licensed two meeting-places in the parish of Orms- 
kirk, one at Bickerstaff, near the house of Sir Edward 
Stanley, who was his great friend, the other at Scaris- 
brick. He was once taken by a party of soldiers, while 
preaching in the chapel at Bickerstaff, when Lady Stan- 
ley, who was attending the service, came out of her gal- 
lery and placed herself near the pulpit door, hoping to 
overawe their spirits and obstruct their designs. And 
when he attended at the Sessions at Wigan, " old Lady 
Stanley came herself with her husband, Mr. Henry 
Hoghton, a justice of the peace, Mr. Christopher Ba- 
nister of Bank, and several others, and spoke much in 
his behalf." So greatly was he esteemed by the gentry 
of the neighbourhood. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



277 



In the early part of the year he had paid a visit to his 
brother at Northowram : — " On Friday, April 20, God 
sent my dear and only brother, Nathaniel Heywood, 
with his wife and his sons, to my house. Oh what 
comfort it was to have these three couples of Heywoods 
to meet together, who are a rising generation, all very 
hopeful ! My brother stayed with me above a week ; 
preached two Lord's Days for me very affectionately, 
powerfully." These sermons were printed after Mr. Na- 
thaniel Hey wood's death, with a preface by his brother. 

Mr. Heywood also wrote a particular account of his 
brother's life, which was printed in 1694^ by Mr. Henry 
Ashhurst, who prefixed a dedication to Hugh Lord 
Willoughby of Parhain, as being the life of a country- 
man of his, and of one for whom his lordship had a just 
esteem*. 

* It is one of the best of the lives of the Non-Conforming minis- 
ters under the Act, of which there are about twenty, each in a small 
volume, beside the general account of them by Dr. Calamy. Mr. 
Nathaniel Heywood is said to have been, " according to his education 
a strict Presbyterian, avoiding both the extremes of Prelatical tyranny 
on the one hand, and Congregational democracy on the other." Mr. 
Ashhurst compliments Lord Willoughby on his " quality and noble 
extraction," but observes that there was something greater, " his 
exemplary piety and zeal for our holy religion in such a degenerate 
and licentious age, and the countenance he gave to serious piety 
wherever he found it among all the different parties into which we 
are so unhappily broken." Thus we see at every turn that the early 
Presbyterians would gladly have preserved the unity of the Protestant 
Church of England, if they could. As to Lord Willoughby, he was 
the twelfth lord, son of Thomas who succeeded to the title on the 
extinction of the eldest line of the family, by Eleanor his wife, 
daughter of Hugh Whittle of Horwich, in Lancashire. He married 
to his first wife a daughter of Laurence Halliday of Tockholes, in 
Lancashire, and to his second the widow of Sir William Egerton of 
Worsley, a son of the second Earl of Bridgewater. The brother of 
Hugh Lord Willoughby married Eleanor Rothwell of Hay, in Lan- 
cashire, a Puritan name, and one of his sisters married Samuel 
Greenhalgh of Adlington, in that county. This branch of the Wil- 
loughbys continued more or less connected with the Presbyterians 
of Lancashire till the extinction of it by the death, without issue, of 
another Hugh Lord Willoughby, who died in 1765. This nobleman 
was President of the Academical Institution which the Presbyterians 
of the north established at Warrington in 1758. 



278 



THE LIFE OF 



Of the two sons who were with him at Northowram, 
the eldest, who bore his father's name, went from thence 
to Mr. Frankland's at Natland to study for the ministry, 
Mr. Heywood's two sons accompanying him. He after- 
wards was the minister of the Non-Conformists at Orms- 
kirk, and the common ancestor of numerous families of 
the name. 

In the month of April Mr. Heywood's sons returned 
from Edinburgh, having completed their intended course of 
study there; an early instance of the English Presbyterians 
sending their sons to study in Scotland. Mr. Heywood 
received a testimony of their irreproachable lives. He 
relates, that at their laureation, when the oath of su- 
premacy was tendered to them, they, with fifty-eight 
others, refused to take it, unless they might be allowed 
to put their own construction upon it. This was not 
allowed, and they lost their degrees in consequence. Mr. 
Heywood regarded this as an instance of " ' suffering for 
conscience sake,' extraordinary in youth, who are na- 
turally eager for honour*." The 9th of May was kept 
as a day of thanksgiving for their safe return and happy 
success in their studies. 

They soon began the exercise of their ministry in the 
same manner in which the father exercised his, were 
ordained by elder ministers, and continued Non-Con- 
forming ministers till their deaths. The elder son preached 
with his father at Samuel Hopkinson's in Sowerby on 
July 26. 

The diary recommences on July 23. My extracts will 
be short, and the comments few. 

" July 29. I preached twice in Honley-chapel," which 
must be the public chapel at that place ; " God assisted 
in a full assembly ; lodged at night at Abraham Wood- 
head's at Thong." On the first of August he went into 
Craven, calling at Thornton on Mr. Hough, who after- 

* Life of Rev. J. Heywood. Works of 0. Heywood, 8vo, 1827, 
vol. i. p. 596. I find, however, both the sons of Mr. Heywood after- 
wards styled M.A. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



279 



wards succeeded Dr. Hooke in the vicarage of Halifax ; 
they lodged at Richard Mitchel's, a house between Skip- 
ton and Settle, at which the ministers who visited that 
country were always hospitably entertained. He preached 
at John Hey's, a near neighbour of Mr.Mitchel, and a man 
of the same hospitable spirit, to a considerable company, 
and afterwards administered the Lord's Supper: " God 
gloriously appeared in his ordinance for good." A day 
or two after this he went to Leeds, where he preached at 
Elkana Hickson's, to a full assembly, in private, but in 
the afternoon at the public meeting-place, where he had 
a great assembly. So that, though the Licenses were no 
longer in force, there were still occasional services in the 
place which the Non-Conformists had erected. There 
was a meeting on the next day at Mr. Matthew Boyse's, 
at which Mr. Heywood was present, to consult about 
Mr. Stretton's return from London, and continuance 
with them ; and he wrote a letter on the subject, which 
was signed by a number of persons of the congregation. 
He visited Mr. Milner, the vicar, who had succeeded 
Mr. Cooke, and discoursed with him. Again he preached 
at the new meeting-place, where was a great assembly. 
On the 10th, he met Mr. Jollie at Captain Hodgson's, 
who had now left Coley-hall and gone to reside at 
Cromwell-botham in another part of the parish, Mr. 
Jollie having come to preach there. On the 15th, he 
kept a solemn day of fasting and prayer at Mr. Daw- 
son's. On the 16th, " had our young men's conference." 
There are frequent notices of this meeting, at which 
theological questions were propounded and discussed. 
On the 19th, he preached at the meeting-place at 
Alverthorpe. On the 23rd, he preached his lecture at 
Sowerby : the 24th, " our black Bartholomew day, was 
our preparatory day for Sacrament ; Mr. Dawson prayed." 
The 26th the Sacrament day ; " son Eli preached." On 
the 29th, he went again to Captain Hodgson's, " where 
we had a day of fasting and prayer for the Church." 
How little different this is from the state of things 



280 



THE LIFE OF 



while the king's Licenses were in force ! The law seems 
to have been a mere cypher in the estimation of Mr. 
Heywood and those about him, and in the estimation 
also of those whose province it was to administer it. He 
was, in fact, preaching publicly every Sunday, beside 
his week-day services. This w^as in direct contravention 
both of the Conventicle Act and the Five Mile Act. 

Sept. 25, he was at York with his two sons; they 
lodged at Mr. John Priestley's : on the 26th, attended 
a conference at Mr. Ward's about God's Immutability ; 
and on the 27th, dined at Sir John Hewley's. In the 
afternoon heard Mr. Williams at Lady Watson's, w 7 ho 
preached very profitably. On the 28th, dined at the 
house of a relation, whom he calls " Aunt Darcy," and 
rode in the afternoon to Mr. Hutton's at Poppleton. On 
the 29th, returned to York and visited Mr. Coulton, 
Lady Hewet, and others, lodging at Sir John Hewley's. 
On the 30th, being Sunday, he preached for Mr. Ward, 
at his meeting-place : " God graciously assisted ; it was 
a very numerous assembly; blessed be God for that 
liberty." On the Monday they left York. 

Oct. 8. "I had Richard Pits and Isaac Taylor, Ana- 
baptists, come to discourse with me about Samuel Hard- 
ger's admission with them." 

This shows that the Anabaptists, or Baptists, as about 
this time they began rather to be called, had in 1677 
acquired a distinct ecclesiastical character in Yorkshire. 
They sprang from the persons whom Mr. Heywood calls 
Antinomians, and their history is a subject entirely di- 
stinct from that of the religious community to which 
Mr. Heywood belonged, though they are so far united 
that both may be classed in the early periods of their 
history under the common head of Puritan. The origin 
of this variety of Dissent is to be traced, as respects 
Yorkshire and Lancashire, to the township of Hepton- 
stall, in the wildest part of the parish of Halifax, lying 
on the borders of the Lancashire parish of Whalley, a 
part of his parish which Mr. Heywood rarely, if ever, 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



281 



visited. There Richard Coore had been the minister, 
and after him Mr. Aiglin, who was followed by Mr. 
Daniel Towne, all of whom were in the extreme of Cal- 
vinism. Among the people who formed the body of 
parishioners of Heptonstall, were two persons, named 
William Mitchell and David Crossley, near relations. 
Mitchell was of an exceedingly religious turn of mind, 
and was accustomed to attend the secret ministrations 
of the Non -Conformists, and at an early period of life 
became a zealous preacher of Antinomianism, having 
left his native parish and settled at Hunslet near Leeds. 
There he preached in the time of the Indulgence ; but 
about the time of which we are speaking, when he was 
twenty-three years old, he commenced a system of itine- 
rant preaching, insisting principally on Free Grace ; and 
though a man rude of speech and of unpolished man- 
ners, he had large assemblies of hearers, who were not 
the fewer in consequence of the attempts to silence him 
by bringing the provisions of the Conventicle Act to 
bear upon him. He was for some time in the castle of 
York. His relative, David Crossley, afterwards united 
with him ; Mitchell died in 1705, and Crossley became 
the pastor of an Antinomian congregation in London. 
But before the death of Mitchell they had established 
about twenty small societies, who had introduced into 
their discipline baptism of persons of age to answer for 
themselves as necessary to the completeness of a Chris- 
tian profession. The principal scene of the labours of 
these two lay-preachers was the mountainous country 
between Yorkshire and Lancashire, their principal esta- 
blishment being at a place called Bacup in one of the 
valleys of that mountainous region, called Rossendale, 
where the chapel was founded in 1691, as soon as the 
Toleration Act allowed of such foundations. It must 
have been some society collected by Mitchell to which 
one of Mr. Heywood's congregation was desirous to join 
himself ; and to the labours of these persons are to be 
traced the several societies of Baptists which sprang up in 



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the parish of Halifax and other parts of the counties of 
York and Lancaster. 

Little change seems to have taken place during the 
period for which the diary is lost, among his friends in 
the direction of Wakefield, for we find him visiting John 
Armitage at Lidget, Mr. Lockwood of Blackhouse, then 
in great distress for the loss of the heir, Mr. Richardson 
at Lassel-hall, Mr. Thorpe at Hopton, and Mr. Josiah 
Oates at Chickenley ; also at Alverthorpe, where he 
preached, we find Mr. Kirk and Mr. Dyneley. He 
visited Mr. Josiah Holds worth, who had been ejected at 
Poppleton, an old man then dying, at Mrs. Kirby's. 
We find him preaching also at Morley. 

In this year he paid seven pounds for a copy of Pool's 
Synopsis Criticorum. 

In this year also he notices the death of one of the 
early opponents of the Non-Conforming ministry, Sir 
John Armitage, on the 3rd of March. He and Mr- 
Peebles of Dewsbury, with some other persons, were 
drinking at Nunbrook on a Saturday night. Returning 
home that night, or on Sunday morning, he fell from 
his horse. His man replaced him. " A second time 
he fell, just by Robin Hood's grave ; his man lifted in 
vain, cast his cloak over him, went back to Nunbrook 
for help, but found him dead, his neck being broken. 
The coroner palliates the business ; calls it apoplexy. 
He was buried at Hardger church, April 9, 1677- Dr. 
Samuel Drake, of Pontefract, preached the funeral ser- 
mon. He had been wonderfully violent in the business 
of the plot thirteen years ago. A most pompous fune- 
ral : his horse led before with gold trappings ; the corpse 
carried in a chariot, attended with six knights. Fifteen 
gold rings given. Fifty pounds within nine shillings 
disbursed to the poor at sixpence a-piece ; forty-five 
tailors employed several days in making mourning : the 
funeral cost 600/." 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



283 



1678. 

This year was spent in the same manner as the last, 
but it is memorable as being the year in which the Pres- 
byterian ministers of the West Riding of Yorkshire first 
resumed the practice of ordination. Of the services of 
this kind in which Mr. Hey wood was engaged, he has 
left a large and instructive account, to which he has 
prefixed the following preface: — "Ancient ministers, 
according to the course of nature, dropping off and 
dying, and some young scholars being trained up in 
learning, and giving good proofs of their public useful- 
ness in future times for the service of the Church, we 
thought it our duty, according to our principles, to set 
some young men apart by examining them according 
to the rules in the Assembly's Directory, fasting and 
prayer and imposition of hands, that there may be a 
provision made for a succession in after times in the 
ministerial work ; and God hath much assisted us in the 
work, and given us great encouragement that he hath 
owned our honest endeavours therein." 

Of this first ordination in Yorkshire I shall give a 
particular account from his manuscript. 

The design originated with Mr. Frankland. On the 
17th of May, he, his wife and son came to visit Mr. 
Hey wood at Northowram, to whom he opened the busi- 
ness. The person whom Mr. Frankland had more par- 
ticularly in view was Mr. John Issot, who was one of 
his earliest pupils, and having completed his education 
was then assisting Mr. Frankland both in preaching and 
teaching. He lived in Mr. Frankland's house, and is 
described by Mr. Heywood as an il able, serious young 
man." Mr. Heywood consented, and promised to en- 
gage Mr. Dawson to assist, Mr. Frankland engaging to 
procure the assistance of Mr. Anthony Sleigh, an ejected 
minister in Northumberland. The time fixed was July 8. 

The intention of holding this ordination being di- 
vulged, two other Non-Conforming ministers who had 



284 



THE LIFE OF 



been long engaged in the ministry, even from before the 
passing of the Act of Uniformity, but who had never 
been ordained, applied to Mr. Heywood to be re- 
ceived to ordination. These were, Mr. Darnton, who 
was ejected at Tanfield, and who had continued preach- 
ing as a Non- Conformist in the neighbourhood of Ripon, 
and Mr. Richard Thorpe of Hopton, whose name has so 
often occurred. Mr. Heywood communicated their de- 
sire to Mr. Frankland, who readily consented, and he 
also wrote to Mr. Thomas Jollie of Altham to request 
his assistance, " knowing his principles to be for it, 
though inclining to the Congregational way." These 
are Mr. Hey wood's own words. The place was Richard 
Mitchel's house in Craven. 

On the day appointed, Mr. Heywood, accompanied 
by Mr. Dawson and Mr. Thorpe, proceeded to the place, 
where they met Mr. Frankland, who brought with him 
Mr. Issot. Mr. Darnton also came, but neither Mr. 
Sleigh nor Mr. Jollie. Illness was alleged as the reason 
of Mr. Sleigh's absence ; but Mr. Jollie assigned as the 
reason, that " he had no acquaintance with the persons 
to be ordained, otherwise he would have come;" and 
he added, that he was " heartily troubled that he missed 
such an opportunity of seeing such friends, of serving 
the interest of the Gospel, and giving a proof what his 
principles were in those matters." These disappoint- 
ments had, however, nearly frustrated the design ; for 
when Mr. Thorpe found that there were no more than 
three ministers to perform the service, he began to 
waver, and had even determined at once to return home. 
Mr. Heywood reasoned with him, and Mr. Frankland 
urged Acts xiii, 1, 2, 3, to prove that there were only 
three engaged in that apostolical ordination, and two 
ordained. He was at last satisfied, and stayed. 

On the next day Mr. Heywood and Mr. Thorpe 
preached at the house of John Hey to a full assembly, 
and Mr. Heywood administered the Lord's Supper to 
about thirty persons. They then began the examination 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



285 



of the candidates, which was chiefly conducted by Mr. 
Frankland. The examinations were inquiries into the 
extent of their knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek 
Scriptures, and of authors in philosophy and divinity. 
Mr. Hey wood says of Mr. Thorpe, that he " adhered to 
Mr. Baxter in some points of faith, justification, which 
Mr. Frankland disowned, which occasioned a short ami- 
cable dispute." This occupied the remainder of the 
second day. 

On the third day they began at eight in the morning, 
Mr. Frankland beginning with prayer. The certificates 
of the candidates were then examined. Then Mr. Thorpe 
positioned on the thesis Datur Divina Providentia, deli- 
vering a learned discourse in Latin. Mr. Hey wood and 
Mr. Dawson opposed him in a short discourse syllogis- 
tically. Then Mr. Issot positioned Quod Ordinatio per 
manuum impositionem per seniores (vulgb vocatos laicos) 
non est valida. " It was an excellent discourse, very 
large and cogent, yet we made our objections." Then 
Mr. Darn ton, whose thesis was Non datur omnibus Gra- 
tia sufficiens. " He begged leave to deliver himself in 
English, which was permitted for the benefit of such as 
were present, and did pretty well, though some of us 
were not so satisfied in his abilities ; yet having testi- 
monials of his pious conversation, Mr. Frankland having 
known him formerly in Northumberland, he producing 
testimonials of approbation granted in 1658 by the com- 
missioners for trial of ministers in those parts, and con- 
fessing his fault and defect in having preached twenty 
years without ordination, and further assuring them that 
he had never baptized a child and had been always seek- 
ing ordination, they consented to regard him as duly 
qualified." Then Mr. Dawson prayed. The candidates 
were next required to make a confession of their faith, 
which they did largely and distinctly ; Mr. Tssot, in par- 
ticular, was " exceeding ample and exact." The next 
step was to inquire of them singly their persuasion of 
the truth of the Reformed religion, their design in taking 



286 THE LIFE OF 

upon themselves the office of the Christian minister, their 
diligence in praying, reading, &c, zeal and faithfulness 
in maintaining the truth, care of their flocks, families, 
willingness to submit to the admonitions of their bre- 
thren, and resolution to continue in their duties against 
all trouble and persecution. The three ministers then 
proceeded to the imposition of hands ; but a question 
arose among them, whether this should be done singly 
or conjointly. The mode was this : Mr. Issot kneeled 
down before them ; Mr. Frankland prayed, and when he 
came to the words " whom we set apart or appoint/' he 
having laid on his hands, the other two ministers did 
the same, and kept them on till Mr. Frankland ceased 
praying. In the same manner they proceeded with the 
other two, Mr. Heywood praying over Mr. Darnton, and 
Mr. Dawson over Mr. Thorpe. This ended, the three 
elder ministers gave them the right hand of fellowship, 
owning them as their brethren in Christ's work. The 
whole company then sat down. Mr. Heywood then 
took a text, which was Matthew ix. 38, on which he 
preached, insisting most on the word " labourers," 
opening the laboriousness of the ministerial calling, and 
pressing it home upon the young ministers in particular. 
He then went to prayers, "wherein," he says, " God 
did wonderfully draw out his heart with exceeding melt- 
ings for these brethren, for Mr. Frankland and his scho- 
lars, for the church ; God helped them all to join, and 
gave some remarkable evidences of his presence. Then 
we sang part of the 132nd Psalm; and so I dismissed 
the assembly with pronouncing the valedictory benedic- 
tion." 

In this orderly, decent, and solemn manner did the 
Yorkshire Presbyterian ministers begin in admitting new 
persons into the ministry. There were present (for I think 
no circumstance, however trifling, ought to be omitted in 
the relation of a work so memorable in the history of 
Presbyterian Non-Conformity) , John Beck, a friend of 
Mr. Frankland's, who accompanied him from West- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



287 



moreland ; several of Mr. Frankland's scholars, as Na- 
thaniel Heywood, Mr. Heywood's nephew, and Timothy 
Halliday, who was afterwards connected with Dr. Wil- 
liams in the congregation at Dublin ; several who had 
been scholars under Mr. Frankland, as John Heywood, 
God's-gift Kirby, Thomas Cotton, and Christopher 
Richardson. Mr. Tssot's father was also present. Also 
several of the Craven Presbyterians, as Richard Mitchel 
and his wife, John Hey and his wife, Thomas Hey, John 
Wilkinson, and Mrs. Lambert. Fourteen or fifteen of 
the party were received into the houses of Mr. Mitchel 
and Mr. Hey. " In the morning we all met again, and 
took our solemn and loving farewell of one another." 

Mr. Heywood adds, " Blessed be God for this fruitful 
blossoming of Aaron's rod, and the strong branches and 
sweet flowers issuing thence, that are likely to prove pil- 
lars and ornaments to the house of God. What a lovely 
sight was it to see so many hopeful plants, and some 
willingly offering themselves in this despised way, in 
such an opposing day as this is ! Oh ! that the blessing 
of Elijah might be upon Elisha ! There is hope the va- 
cant rooms of God's deceased servants may be filled up. 
Lord, take thou the glory, and let the Church have profit 
of their successors' labours." 

There is little beside that is remarkable in the minis- 
terial life of Mr. Heywood in the year 1678. He pur- 
sued his course unmolested, preaching when and where 
and how he pleased, even occasionally in the public 
chapels, when he had the consent of the minister or 
people. Yet a few extracts from his diary may be 
added : — 

" On new-year's day I rode to Idle, preached there in 
the chapel, had a numerous audience ; lodged at Tho- 
mas Ledgard's. Jan. 9, at Leeds ; heard part of Mr. 
Sharp's lecture ; dined with Mr. Thomas Wilson, and 
preached that night at James Nettleton's." On the next 
day he visited Mr. Whitaker, who had succeeded Mr. 
Nesse. Jan. 15, preached at John Butter worth's at 



288 



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Warley. Jan. 23. " I writ part of a letter in answer to 
J. Firth, turned papist, in London. " Jan. 24, preached 
his lecture at Sowerby ; on the 30th he went to Halifax 
to the funeral of Mr. Thomas Lister of Shipden-hall, 
where he says he heard "Dr. Hooke's commendation 
of him, and censure of us." 

Feb. 1 : "I had several visitors, some with cases of 
conscience ; some strange passages heard." This is 
hardly distinguishable from the confession of the Roman 
Church. Feb. 2, on his way to Wakefield lodged at 
Mr. Josiah Oates' at Chickenley, preached the next day 
at Alverthorpe, and lodged at Mr. Dyneley's. Feb. 28, 
he and Mr. Root preached at Mr. Cotton's to a full as- 
sembly. March 26, he preached at Joshua Walker's at 
Rushworth-hall in Bingley. In April he went into Lan- 
cashire, visiting the houses at which we find him to have 
been formerly entertained. He went to Ormskirk, had 
a solemn day of fasting and prayer at his sister's house, 
when Mr. Starkey prayed, and he preached. The next 
day he accompanied his sister and her brother to Liver- 
pool, where her younger son, Richard Hey wood, was 
placed with Mr. Percival, a merchant # . He preached 
twice at Toxteth-park chapel. While in the neighbour- 
hood he visited Mr. Briscoe, Mr. Crompton, Mr. Lither- 
land, and Mr. Atherton. On the 17th he preached a 
funeral sermon for his brother at that which had been 
his father's house, when a multitude of people were 
present. 

In the same month he visited Lady Rodes at Hough- 
ton, Mr. Wordsworth at Swathe-hall, Mr. Cotes at 
Wath, and Mr. Gill at Car-house. Mr. Gill accompa- 
nied him to Mr. Staniforth's of Firbeck, in a singularly 
beautiful part of the country near the ruins of Roche 

* This "Richard settled at Drogheda, where he was very prosper- 
ous, and, having no children, took his nephew, Benjamin Hey wood 
(son of his elder brother Nathaniel, the minister), to reside with him, 
whose three sons, Arthur, Benjamin, and Nathaniel, returning to 
England, became each the ancestor of families of the name still ex- 
isting. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



289 



Abbev ; and the next day, being Sunday, he preached in 
Firbeck Church, where, though the congregation was 
small, he had for his hearers Sir Ralph Knight, Mr. 
Hatfield of Laughton, and Major Taylor. Sir Ralph 
Knight and Major Taylor were old Parliamentarian 
officers who had settled themselves on the borders of 
the wide parish of Laughton, the former at Langold, 
and the latter at Walling- wells. On his return he was 
present at a solemn day at Mr. Cotes', on account of his 
wife, who was " melancholy," where Mr. Milner* and 
Mr. Johnson prayed, and he and Mr. Cotes preached : 
many persons were present. 

On May 17 : "I stayed at home ; God assisted in the 
morning; forenoon married a couple." This is the only 
instance in which he speaks of performing this ceremony 
when a Non-Conformist. 

May 22. " Mr. Sagar of Blackburn visited me. My 
father Angier's books came." June 20, he was in Lan- 
cashire, and kept a fast at Hulme-hall " with aunt Mose- 
ley." There were present Mr. Tildesley, Mr. Newcome, 
Mr. Eaton, Mr. Finch, Mr. Scoles, and Mr. Richardson, 
all ministers. Here he preached, and again at Mr. New- 
come's, where he had a very great auditory. 

July 18, he received a visit at Northowram from a 
Scotch nobleman, Lord Rutherford f, with whom and 
Jonathan Priestley he spent most of the afternoon. In 
this month he visited the Cottons, Riches, Wordsworths, 
and others about Peniston ; preached at Thomas Leach's 

* Mr. Milner was ejected at Rothwell, and at this time was the 
chaplain to Lady Rodes. 

f Lord Rutherford was again with him on the 4th of September, 
and on the 23rd Mr. and Mrs. Heywood dined with him at Halifax. 
There existed at this time, and long afterwards, a community of 
feeling between the Scotch and English Presbyterians. There are 
two or three instances of the engrafting heiresses of English Pres- 
byterian families into the families of the Scotch nobility. Many of 
the accessions made to the English Presbyterian congregations in 
the first half of the last century were by the settlement in England 
of Scotch families, till in time the doctrinal changes in the English 
Presbyterians outran those of their brethren in Scotland. 

U 



290 



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at Riddlesden-hall, when he haptized his son David, 
On August 1, he remarks, " at 5 o'clock God returned 
to my heart after his long withdrawings, in secret prayer." 
August 1 9, " I went into Boulin to bring Mrs. Lambert # 
upon her way towards Leeds." On August 29, he and 
Mr. Hancock preached at Mr. Riche's at Bull-house to 

* Mrs. Lambert, who it will be remembered was present at the 
ordination in Craven, was the wife of the son of Major- General Lam- 
bert, then a prisoner, as he remained for the rest of his life. She 
was a daughter of the family of Lister of Arnoldsbiggen. Dr. Whita- 
ker tells a not very credible story of a stolen match made by her 
with Charles Nowel of Merely : they were married, he says, in a 
covered walk lately remaining at Arnoldsbiggen, and immediately 
separated ; nor did they ever meet after, for he was drowned in re- 
turning home with the license for the marriage in his pocket. She 
then married Mr. Lambert of Calton. Mr. Heywood has an authen- 
tic and valuable notice of this Mr. Lambert : — " Mr. John Lambert, 
son to General Lambert, came into Craven ; much addicted to plea- 
sure, which his wife was against; seized with palsy, January '76, 
about which time his mother died in Plymouth Castle. His father 
sent him a plain convincing letter against his extravagance. His 
wife had got Mr. Frankland to preach in Craven • he was against it, 
but changed." He invited Mr. Heywood to preach, showed him his 
pictures, he being an " exact limner." He was beyond all the gentry 
for bowling, shooting, &c. ; an excellent scholar, a man of much 
reading, great memory, admirable parts. His only son died the 
same year. Dr. Whitaker says, that while he went to the church 
at Kirkby Malham-dale, his wife walked every Sunday to the Dis- 
senting chapel at Winterburn, which arose out of the meeting at 
John Hey's. 

Mr. Lambert was buried on March 18, 1701-2, aged sixty-three, 
leaving a daughter and heir, who married Sir John Middleton of 
Belsay Castle in Northumberland, baronet, the son of Sir William 
Middleton, to whom Nathaniel Baxter, one of the ejected ministers, 
was for some time chaplain. In 1715 there was a Dissenting con- 
gregation of three hundred persons at Belsay, of which Cumberbach 
Leech, who was educated in Mr. Frankland's academy, was then the 
minister. 

We may trace a spirit of Puritanism early in the family of Lam- 
bert. The name of the General's father was Josias, and we find the 
family using the names of Joseph, Benjamin, Reuben, Joshua, and 
Dinah. The General was the issue of a third marriage, born when 
his father was sixty -five, and when two sisters had been long mar- 
ried under the notion of being the heiresses of Calton. 

Walpole says that both the General and his son were artists, 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



291 



a full assembly. September 12, he kept a solemn fast 
at Mary Burkhead's in Birstall parish with Mr. Dawson 
and Mr. Holdsworth. 

September 13, he rode to Mr. Whitehurst's house 
near Clayton, and discoursed with him, John Foster, and 
John Jowet, about their differences. 

December 2, " I went to Chickenley, where Mr. Root, 
Mr. Josiah Holdsworth and I were to spend a day in 
prayer with one Francis Brow T n, a melancholy man. 
Mr. Root failing, God helped us two in prayer wonder- 
fully, and in speaking to him. I lodged w T ith Mr. Josiah 
Oates." 

In the course of this year Mr. Heywood had the sa- 
tisfaction of seeing both his sons enter upon the regular 
exercise of their ministry. The eldest was engaged for 
a few months in a school at Kirk-Heton ; but in Sep- 
tember he went into Craven,, where he preached to the 
little knot of Puritan families about Richard Mitchel's 
and John Hey's. In the same month the younger son 
went to be chaplain to Major Taylor at Walling- wells, 
with whom an acquaintance had begun when Mr. Hey- 
wood preached at Firbeck. 

In this year he received of his regular hearers 34 Z. 1 1 s. 6d., 
and in legacies and gifts from other persons, about the 
same sum. 

1679. 

This year resembled the last. 

"Saturday, January 4, rode towards Alverthorpe; 
lodged at Mr. Josiah Oates at Chickenley: 5, rode to 
Alverthorpe ; preached, God graciously helped ; the bad 
news of Parliament's proroguing did quicken prayer with 
enlargement ; blessed be God. I returned to Chicken- 
ley." February 26, preached for three hours to a great 
congregation in Idle chapel. April 10, "I went to 
Sowerby to the funeral of Mr. Joshua Horton, where 
Dr. Hooke preached on Joshua xxiii. 14. God helped 

u 2 



292 



THE LIFE OF 



me both in the morning and at night to plead for a suc- 
cession of his children in his room." 

On April 13 he preached at Shaw chapel in Lanca- 
shire to a numerous assembly. Here he was not allowed 
to proceed without molestation ; for in the evening he 
was arrested by Thomas Baskervile, the high constable, 
and taken before Mr. Entwisle, a neighbouring magis- 
trate, who treated him roughly. The next day Mr. En- 
twisle took sureties for his appearance at Manchester at 
the next Quarter Sessions, when he was set at liberty. 
On the 9th of May he appeared at the Sessions, " was 
called, came off clear, God wonderfully working in his 
providence for me." He spent the evening at the house 
of his brother-in-law, Mr. Hulton, with Mr. Tildesley 
and Dr. Cart*, 

April 21, he was at the funeral of Mr. Sale at Cal- 
verley. This was another of the ministers who had been 
ejected. 

April 22, he set out on a journey among his friends 
in the south of the West Riding, — Mr. Thorpe of Hop- 
ton, Mr. Cotton of Denby, Mr. Benton of Barnsley, a 
minister ejected from Thurnscoe, who betook himself to 
trade, Mr. Wordsworth of Swathe, Mr. Gill of Car- 
house, Mr. Hatfield of Laughton, and Mr. Staniforth 
of Firbeck. At this last-named house there was a so- 
lemn fast on April 25, when there were many people, 
and Mr. Porter, an ejected minister then residing at 
Mansfield, and Mr. Hey wood carried on the work for 
about six hours. In the evening he rode to Mr. Tay- 
lor's, calling at Sir Ralph Knight's by the way. On the 
next day he returned to Mr. Staniforth's, and on the day 
following, being Sunday, he preached again in the church 
at Firbeck to a pretty large congregation. On Monday 
he returned to Walling- wells. On Tuesday he went to 
Mr. Hatfield's at Laughton, where he stayed to the even- 

* Dr. Cart was a physician at Manchester, a son of Mr. Cart who 
had been ejected at Hansworth. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



293 



ing of the next day, having " full discourse with that 
ingenious gentleman," and then returned to Walling- 
wells, the object of the journey having been to visit 
Major Taylor, who had however died the 29th of March 
preceding # . On May 1 he went to visit Mr. Jessop, a 
justice of the peace, living at Scofton with his " good 
aunt, Mrs. South f." Mr. Hey wood made a longer stay 
at Walling- wells than usual. One of the days was a 
Sunday, when he preached at the hall, where a consider- 
able company was assembled. He left Walling-wells 
on the 5th. On his return he visited Mrs. Clayton at 

* Major Samuel Taylor is said by Mr. Hey wood to have had an 
estate of 5000/. a-year. He was one of the Presbyterians who hailed 
with joy the return of the king. He then lived at Oldcotes, and his 
wife was accidentally killed by the discharge of a gun by a servant 
in the course of the rejoicings there on that occasion. He was sent 
by Charles II. to fortify Tangier, and during his absence his son and 
heir was placed under the care of Mr. Cart of Hansworth. The son 
who succeeded him was member for Retford, and sheriff of Notting- 
hamshire. He inherited the principles of his father, and kept up in 
his family the religious habits of the earlier times, Mr. Eliezer Hey- 
wood living with him for twenty years as his chaplain. He mar- 
ried one of the many daughters of his neighbour, Sir Ralph Knight 
of Langold, and at his death in 1699 left an only daughter, who was 
then late]y married to Thomas White, Esq., of Tuxford, who came 
to reside at Walling-wells. Mr. White was member for Retford and 
the father of John White, who also represented Retford, and of 
Taylor White, an eminent Whig lawyer. The grandson of Taylor 
White was created a baronet in 1802. 

f This was Francis Jessop, Esq., an early member of the Royal 
Society, and a cultivator of natural and abstract science. His chief 
residence was at Broom-hall in the parish of Sheffield. His aunt, 
Mrs. South, and his mother, were early friends of Mr. Bagshaw, the 
ejected minister in the Peak, who dedicated to them one of his tracts. 
Mr. Jessop was a friend of the family of Mr. Fisher, the ejected vicar 
of Sheffield, and endeavoured on one occasion to protect Mr. Bloom, 
another of the Sheffield ejected ministers, when he was called before 
the justices at the Sessions at Rotherham. As Mr. Heywood relates 
the story, there was on this occasion very rude behaviour, — Sir John 
Reresby having given Mr. Jessop a wound on the cheek by a lead- 
standish, which he threw at him, and was only prevented from at- 
tacking him with his rapier by Mr. Jessop's son, then a stripling of 
fifteen. The youth became a distinguished lawyer and member of 
Parliament, and had an only son who was Lord Darcy of Navan. 



294 



THE LIFE OF 



Rotherham, Mr. Gill, and Lady Rodes at Houghton, 
where he conversed " with that sweet ingenious fa- 
mily." 

May 26, he visited Mr. John Nettleton at Dewsbury, 
and on the 27th preached at the house of John Robin- 
son in Deanhead, where he had never been before. 
June 6, Mr. Jollie, Mr. Dawson, and he kept a solemn 
fast at Mr. Dawson's on the public account of the na- 
tion. On June 27 he was again at Walling-wells, where 
Mr. Billingsley, a Nottinghamshire minister, and he kept 
a solemn day of fasting, preaching, and praying; 4 'we 
held together about seven hours." On his return he 
visited Mr. Bloom at Attercliffe, and the next day Mr. 
Prime at Sheffield, and the succeeding day Mr. Hancock 
at Shiercliffe-hall. These had been the three assistant- 
ministers of the church of Sheffield, who were all, with 
the vicar, removed from their places by the Act of Uni- 
formity. Mr. Bloom and Mr. Hancock had collected a 
church of which they were the joint ministers # ; but in 
a short time differences arose between them, and they 
separated. It was the object of this visit of Mr. Hey- 
wood to compose these differences, and under July 2 he 
says, " having discoursed Mr. Hancock about the breach, 
I sent for Mr. Bloom ; had them together : we spent 
that forenoon in loving disputes ; at last it pleased God 
to compose the difference which had long continued : 
blessed be God ! after that Mr. Hancock and I rode to 
Mr. Wordsworth's of Swathe-hall." On the next day 
he went to Houghton, where he prayed and preached 
four or five hours to a full assembly. On July 15, l< writ 

* Of the formation of this Dissenting society in 1676 a very par- 
ticular account is given from a contemporary manuscript in my Hi- 
story of Hallamshire, fol. 1819, pp. 161 — 163. The difference which 
arose between the two ministers was a subject of great concern 
among the Non-Conformists of South Yorkshire. It probably was 
occasioned by the want of settled principles of church order, and of 
authority vested in some independent party to enforce them. But 
the union of ministers in the charge of the same congregation has 
not unfrequently been thus unfortunate. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



295 



something of special moment about an agreement betwixt 
Mr. Hancock and Mr. Bloom." 

On the 20th he preached at Alverthorpe in the meet- 
ing-place. " The officers sent word they would come 
about three o'clock ; we began sooner ; dispatched all 
before ; but they came not." 

On the 1st of August he set out on a visit to Mr. 
Frankland in Westmoreland, While there he " preached 
to Mr. Frankland's people in a very full assembly in a 
great vast hall belonging to Mr. Bellingham, farmed by 
Henry Strickland ; a very numerous assembly." 

On the 6th he was engaged in composing another 
church difference. " I came to the appointed meeting 
at Mr. Whitehurst's, where Mr. Jollie, Mr. Marsden, 
Mr. Ashley of Hull, Mr. Whitaker, Mr. Holdsworth, 
and T, with many others, met to compose the difference." 
Concerning this affair there are other notices, which de- 
serve transcription, as showing the state of the Non- 
Conforming body at the beginning of the separation : — 
(t Mr. Richard Whitehurst of ' Lighten-in-the-morning' 
(Laughton-en-le-Morthen), called to a church gathered 
at Allerton and Horton ; much applauded, till he began 
to preach the Fifth Monarchy, which disgusted them. 
John Hall, Joseph Lister # , and George Ward (principal 
members, yea officers, yea preachers themselves in the 

* This Joseph Lister left an account of his own life, a piece of 
autobiography of some interest, which was printed by Mr. Thomas 
Wright at Wakefield in a small tract about 1790. He was the fa- 
ther of David Lister and Accepted Lister, two ministers, of whom 
David died when he had preached but three times. He thus speaks 
of Mr. Whitehurst : — " My wife and I were admitted into the church 
at Kipping, with which we walked satisfyingly many years. The 
church called one Mr. Whitehurst to be pastor to them, and he 
gave content some years ; yet he proved at last so wedded to the 
doctrine of the kingdom of Christ, as he called it, together with other 
notions, from which he could not be got, that it made a breach in 
the church : some of his hearers left him, and others walked with 
him till new matter of dissatisfaction broke out, and then they also 
left him to provide for himself. He then went to Burlington, and 
died. After he was gone, the church at Kipping was again united 
and walked sweetly together, but could not get a pastor." 



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assembly as ' gifted brethren ' in their pastor's absence, 
yea presence, and maintained that work before they had 
one), these three have withdrawn themselves from com- 
munion, will not visit one another, though Mr. White- 
hurst lives under the same roof with John Hall ; but he 
spends so much time about Christ's personal reign that 
should be upon more profitable subjects." Again : " I 
told them, this was the fruit of giving leave to private 
men exercising their gifts publicly, which they have long 
practised, and gave some instances of the sad conse- 
quences of it, and wished Christians' way of exercising 
gifts were duly stated and stinted according to Scripture 
rule. 'Tis true they look on me as a Presbyterian and 
profess themselves Independents, yet seem to be willing 
to refer their matter to Mr. Sharp and me, and two of 
their own." 

On September 14 he went to York to the election of 
members of Parliament. He set out from Alverthorpe, 
Mr. John Kirk and Mr. Joseph Scot accompanying him. 
Lord Clifford and Lord Fairfax w T ere opposed by Sir 
John Kaye. He lodged at Sir John Hewley's. On the 
16th he says, " they shouted and polled, but I preached 
at Lady Watson's in forenoon ; afternoon visited some 
friends, and was at the young men's disputation at Mr. 
Ward's, An Episcopatus diocesanus sit licitus ? Spent 
the evening with Lady He wet." On the 17th he dined 
with Lord Clifford, Sir Gilbert Gerard, Sir John Brook, 
and others at Sir John Hewley's. On the 18th he 
preached in Sir John Hewley's chamber, and returned 
home. 

October 23, " T preached at John Hey's to a full as- 
sembly ; God wonderfully helpt in prayer ; such tears, 
groans, that sometimes my voice was scarce heard for 
the noise of people's cries ; I have seldom heard the like ; 
a good sign." 

November 8, " I came to Richard Hargreaves' ; dined 
with Dr. Whitaker and others ; discoursed some sad 
cases of difference amongst God's people." Here is 



OLIVER HEYW00D. 



297 



another occasion on which to remark, that the Non- 
Conformists began thus early to find the inconvenience 
of the want of a superincumbent power keeping order 
among ministers, and keeping ministers and people in 
their right places. They were not yet clear of the diffi- 
culties about Mr. Whitehurst. December 19, "I rode 
to Mr. Whitehurst's upon a call, where was a meeting of 
him and the Dissenters ; many tough arguings they had, 
but no accommodation likely ; Lord^ humble us for that 
heavy breach." 

On the whole it appears that, during this year, his 
most frequent places of preaching were his own house 
at Northowram, Warley, Sowerby, Lidget, Alverthorpe, 
Morley, and at John Hey's in Craven. 

In this year he published his volume entitled ' Life in 
God's Favour/ which is a very long sermon on Psalm 
xxx. 5. 

1680. 

The diary extends only to May 7? and there is nothing 
in what occurs in that part of the present year of im- 
portance. There is a period of two years from that date 
in which there is no diary remaining. 

Two events in this year are all that require to be no- 
ticed. 

First, his excommunication. — I find nothing of this 
in his remaining manuscripts, but in Dr. Calamy's Life 
of him we are told that "upon August 15, 1680, he 
was cited into the Consistory Court at York, together 
with his wife and several of his neighbours, for not going 
to the Sacrament in the parish church at Halifax. For 
contempt in not appearing they were all excommunicated, 
and the excommunications were read in Halifax church 
on October 24 following ; but keeping private, the storm 
soon blew over." 

Next, an ordination. — Pending these proceedings, he 
was concerned in an ordination which was held at the 
same place as the one before described at large, namely , 



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John Hey's in Craven. The day was the memorable 
24th of August, and the person ordained was Mr. Timo- 
thy Hodgson, son of Mr. Hey wood's early friend, Cap- 
tain John Hodgson. Timothy Hodgson was living as 
chaplain in the house of Sir John Hewley. Mr. Hodg- 
son applied to Mr. Heywood, who acquainted Mr. Frank- 
land, Mr. Jollie, and other ministers. Mr. Heywood 
and Mr. Dawson were early at the place ; so also was 
Mr. Jollie ; but Mr. Frankland did not arrive till the 
evening. The day was spent in prayer, and Mr. Hodg- 
son preached and gave an account of his religious expe- 
rience. When Mr. Frankland arrived, Mr. Jollie moved 
to have the ordination put off, and there arose debates 
among them, which ended in Mr. Jollie withdrawing 
himself and going home # . Mr. Hodgson's testimonials 
were signed by Sir John Hewley and Mr. Ward of 

* Mr. Jollie was, as before observed, an Independent ; and the 
congregation at Altham, of which he was the minister, was an In- 
dependent congregation formed according to the strictest rules of 
Independency in the Commonwealth times. A regular record was 
kept of all its proceedings, of which an early abstract remains in the 
possession of Mr. Jollie's descendants, throwing the strongest light of 
anything I have ever seen on the constitution and usages of these 
societies. Church censures were frequently called for on account 
of flagrant immoralities in the midst of the incessant religious exer- 
cises, and the perpetual renewing of covenants. Excommunications 
were not unfrequent. One reads such an unfeeling entry as the fol- 
lowing with a feeling approximating to the indignant : — " 1655, Jen- 
net Cunliffe for keeping company with a papist, and promising him 
marriage against the advice of the church founded on the word of 
God, and persisting in it after admonition, was cast out of commu- 
nion in the ensuing form : — I do here, in the name and with the 
power of the Lord Jesus, and in the name of the people of God, cast 
Jennet Cunliffe out of the Church, and deliver her up to Satan for 
the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day 
of the Lord Jesus." With what inconsistency would this knot of 
country people in one of the rudest and most ignorant parts of Lan- 
cashire complain of the excommunications of the prelates, or even 
of the sentences of the Roman Catholic Church ? The young lady 
was a daughter of a member of Parliament, and the gentleman to 
whom she was attached and afterwards married was of one of the 
best families in the parish, — John Grimshaw, Esq. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



299 



York. His thesis was the question, An Ordinatio mi- 
nistri sine titulo, id est sine ecclesid in qua ordinaretur, 
sit ceque ridicula ac si quis maritus fingeretur esse sine 
uxore? The service was conducted, as on the former 
occasion, with imposition of hands. Mr. Hey wood, 
Mr. Frankland, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Wright, and Mr. Is- 
sot laid on their hands. There were several scholars 
and young ministers present, as Mr. John Heywood, 
Mr. Cotton, Mr. Kirby, Mr. Halliday, Mr. John Lister, 
and Mr. Peter Finch, beside John Beck and the Craven 
people, including Mrs. Lambert. 

Mr. Hodgson continued to reside in the family of Sir 
John and Lady Hewley for many years. 

1681. 

Mr. Heywood was engaged in two other ordinations 
in the course of this year. 

The first was that of a person who became distin- 
guished in the Dissenting body in Yorkshire, Timothy 
Jollie, the son of Thomas Jollie of Altham. He was 
educated in Frankland's academy, which he entered as 
early as 1673, and when he had completed his term of 
study went to London, where he joined a church of which 
Mr. Griffith was pastor # . On the death of Mr. Durant 
he was invited to become the pastor of a congregation 
of Dissenters at Sheffield, and had not been long there 
before he sought to be ordained. Mr. Heywood con- 
sented to take part in it, and on the 26th of April 1681 
he proceeded to Sheffield, accompanied by Mr. Thomas 
Jollie. They were received at the house of Abel Yates, 
where Mr. Timothy Jollie boarded, and were joined the 
next morning by Mr. Hancock and Mr. Bloom. These 
four ministers were the ordainers, Mr. Heywood acting 
as moderator. They began the work at ten o'clock with 
prayer. Mr. Timothy Jollie then delivered a sermon on 

* Mr. George Griffith, ejected from the Charter-house. The 
place of meeting was Girdlers'-hall in Bishopsgate- street. — Calamy, 
Account, p. 51. 



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Isaiah v, 1, 2. To this part of the service the public 
were admitted. The ministers were then left alone for 
three hours, which they spent in examining the candi- 
date in logic, philosophy, languages, divinity, &c. There 
was no Latin thesis on which he had to speak, but this 
was an accidental omission ; instead, there was an ex- 
temporary discussion among them, An Infantes omnes 
baptizatorum, etsi scandalizantium, sint baptizandi ? This 
was the work of the first day, and it was concluded a 
little before six. They met again at Abel Yates', when 
the work was carried on at seven the next morning. 
But in the meantime some dissatisfaction was expressed 
by two members of the society at Sheffield at what was 
going on. They being Independents disliked this ordi- 
nation by Presbyters, and said that it should be done by 
Ruling Elders in the name of the people, which indeed 
it ought to have been had Mr. Jollie's been an Inde- 
pendent ordination to an Independent pastorship. No 
notice was, however, taken of that opinion or of them, 
and the ministers went on with their work. Mr. Han- 
cock and Mr. Bloom prayed, most of the members of 
the society being then present. Mr. Heywood then 
proposed the prescribed questions ; and Mr. Jollie having 
given satisfactory answers, his father in a very pathetic 
manner gave him up to God as a minister, as he had 
formerly given him up in baptism. He then kneeled 
down, and the ministers standing round him, Mr. Hey- 
wood prayed, the ministers laying their hands upon him. 
The whole assembly were strongly affected. When this 
was over, Mr. Heywood gave an exhortation, and ended 
with prayer. 

The ordination being over, the elders of the church 
desired all who were not of the society to withdraw, 
when Mr. Heywood himself and all the strangers, of 
whom there were many, retired. An elder then read 
the letter of Mr. Griffith dismissing Mr. Jollie from the 
church in London. He then signified the desire of the 
people that Mr. Jollie should undertake the office of 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



301 



pastor, in which the people expressed their concurrence 
by holding up their hands. He assented. Mr. Thomas 
Jollie then delivered an address on the relative duties of 
pastor and people, and Mr. Timothy Jollie concluded 
the whole business with prayer. The service on this 
second day occupied nearly twelve hours. 

Mr. Hey wood has some remarks on the " more than 
ordinary mercies in this solemnity/' which are deserving 
attention, as throwing light on the state of the Non- 
Conforming body at this period : — 

" First, that this church, which was always accounted 
Independent, would admit of a pastor ordained by Pres- 
byters ; yea Mr. Durant immediately before was of an- 
other persuasion. I look on this as an olive-branch of 
peace amongst God's people. — Second, there was no 
doubt or objection raised in that affair, as young Mr. 
Jollie observed, ' no noise of a hammer in that building.' 
He was glad Mr. Ogle # came not, though invited, who is 
otherwise minded, yet by Providence necessarily hin- 
dered ; living at Chesterfield. — Thirdly, Mr. Hancock 
and Mr. Bloom, who have had an unhappy clashing a 
considerable time, sweetly joined in this work without 
the least reflection, yea with some humble acknowledge- 
ments of their folly ; which is a hopeful sign of recon- 
ciliation. — Fourthly, though it was too well known in 
town, and parish, and country, for which we had reason 
to challenge some for imprudence, yet there was no dis- 
turbance or affront howsoever, in the midst of a consi- 
derable market- town ; and if no hurt came of it, we 
must ascribe it to God's providence, not our prudence. — 
Fifthly, it is a wonderfully transcendent mercy that in 
such a day as this is, God raiseth up out of private 
schools so many young men so well furnished with 
learning, gifts, graces, for his work, as a seminary for the 
church, to ' build up the waste places of Zion.' — Sixth, 
God did not withdraw his gracious presence and assistance 

* Mr. Thomas Ogle, ejected at Rolleston in Nottinghamshire. — 
Calami/, Account, p. 529. 



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from our work, but did melt many hearts in prayer ; I 
hope some will remember it while they have a day to 
live. — Seventh, many, I think, all the people, were very 
well satisfied : several of them came to us the day fol- 
lowing, expressed their gratitude, and high resentment 
of that day's work, and the young man himself was 
abundantly encouraged. Blessed, for ever blessed, be the 
Lord for his mercy thus far." 

A record of the proceeding, engrossed on parchment, 
and signed by the ordaining ministers, was delivered to 
Mr. Timothy Jollie. Mr. Billingsley, a student under 
Frankland, and Mr. Kirby and Mr. Eliezer Heywood, 
two young and unordained ministers, were present. 

While the ministers were together, they were desired 
to pay some attention to the qualifications for the mi- 
nistry of two other persons. One was Mr. David Noble, 
who had been the schoolmaster at Morley, with whom 
Mr. Heywood placed his sons, and who was then the 
chaplain to Mr. Woolhouse of Glapwell, in Derbyshire. 
He prayed and preached before them " very profitably 

* They did not, however, proceed to the ordination of Mr. Noble, 
who was a Scotsman, born at Inverness, and brought up to the 
business of a tailor ; but, being of a studious turn of mind, he " ac- 
quired the Latin and Greek tongues to that perfection, that he offered 
himself to the severest examination, and passed it with success." He 
came to England, and became, as we have seen, a teacher of a school. 
Mr. Woolhouse of Glapwell, who was an Independent, took him 
into his house as a private chaplain, and he preached there and at 
Sutton in Nottinghamshire. He received Presbyterian ordination 
from Mr. Whitlock and Mr. Reynolds, the ejected ministers of Not- 
tingham, as " one whom God, by extraordinary qualifications, had 
pointed out for the work and success." He finally became pastor of 
the Independent congregation at Heckmonwyke, where he died, in 
November, 1709. He was very much devoted to the study of the 
prophetical books of Scripture, particularly the Apocalypse, on which 
he left, in manuscript, a large treatise, and the book of Daniel. 
In 1700 he printed, in 8vo, a work, entitled The Visions and Prophe- 
cies of Daniel explained. He left other treatises, in manuscript, on 
divers points in divinity. — Part of this note is taken from a con- 
temporary memorandum in the copy of his work on Daniel in the 
Library of the Dissenting Academy lately at York. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



303 



The other was Robert Dickenson, a Ruling Elder in the 
society, but living beyond Doncaster. He had been an 
occasional preacher for the two preceding years. 

Mr. Jollie continued the pastor of the society at Shef- 
field till his death, in 1714, and was for many years the 
tutor of the academy which succeeded Frankland's at 
Attercliffe. 

In the other ordination of this year, in which Mr. 
Heywood was engaged, his own son, John Heywood, 
was the person ordained, and the house at which the 
service was performed was that of John Hey in Craven. 
The choice of this place probably arose out of the desire 
of privacy, and the convenience of Mr. Frankland, then 
living near Kendal. It was proposed that Mr. Frank- 
land, Mr. Jollie, Mr. Heywood, Mr. Dawson and Mr. 
Issot should ordain, but, before the time arrived, Mr. 
Jollie invited Mr. Heywood to meet him at Mr. Whita- 
ker's at Leeds, where were also Mr. Naylor and Mr. 
Holdsworth, when " Mr. Jollie read us some funda- 
mentals in doctrine and distinctions about communion 
of churches he had prepared ; but we did little ; only we 
had some discourse about my son John. Mr. Jollie took 
me aside, and made his objections of some miscarriages 
he had heard of, and also declared his judgement that 
he ought to be set apart in the church to which he 
was related. This latter, I answered, could not be done ; 
and for the former, I writ, on the morning after, and 
received a satisfactory answer, that his intelligence was 
not true ; and, indeed, T had been several years much 
comforted in my son John's serious spirit, diligent stu- 
dies, pious conversation. Such things, coming from so 
good a man, did much trouble me, and engaged me to 
a diligent search, which search did increase my satisfac- 
tion. However,, jealousies were much raised in me." Mr. 
Jollie finally did not join with the four other ministers 
who performed the ordinance on the 23rd and 24th of 
August, the great solemn day of the Non-Conformists. 

There is nothing peculiar in the manner of this or- 



L_ 



304 



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dination, except that testimonials to the candidate's 
" ministerial abilities, soundness in faith, pious conver- 
sation/' from several places where he had preached, 
Coley, Morley, Warley, Lidget and Cawthorne, were 
produced. John "Hey and Richard Mitchel declared 
their satisfaction. His thesis was An Episcopus idem sit 
qui Presbyter ? A certificate was given to him by the 
ministers. 

A number of young ministers were present, all having 
studied under Mr. Frankland, as Mr. Kirby, Mr. Halli- 
day, Mr. Whitworth, Mr. Byrom, Mr. Jones and Eliezer 
Heywood ; John Beck came from Kendal. Thomas 
Leach, one of Mr. Hey wood's congregation, was there, 
and the two Craven friends. 

Mr. John Heywood had been for a short time chaplain 
to Lady Wilbraham, between the time of his leaving the 
people in Craven and his ordination ; and for a short 
time after the ordination he was with his Craven friends, 
preaching for Mr. Issot, who was at that time their 
pastor. Mr. Heywood has left a very minute account of 
the movements of his son for the first ten months after 
his ordination, in which it appears that he preached 
for some weeks, at Mr. Frankland's suggestion, at two 
private houses on the borders of Westmoreland, namely, 
John Thornton's, nine miles from Lancaster, and John 
Thornback's, at Mid dleton -head, near Sedbergh. But 
he had very few hearers, and those not very attentive, 
and all the income the people could promise was six 
pounds a -year. His father fetched him away # , and, in 
June, 1682, sent the two brothers to London, to " hear 
famous ministers and converse with scholars." 

And while on the business of ordination, I shall give 
some account of another, though it belongs to the June 

* In the diary, May 24, 1682, Mr. Heywood says, " Frank Becket 
and others of my son's hearers came to me ; told me their discon- 
tentments as to danger and people's falling off. I took my son from 
them, being very unworthy ; wept and prayed among them : they 
were little affected ; I saw his work was at an end there." 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



305 



of 1682. In April Mr. Jollie called on Mr. Heywood 
about the setting apart to the ministry Mr. Robert Wad- 
dington, who had been a ruling elder in Mr. Jollie's 
church. It was proposed that Mr. Benson of Kellet, near 
Lancaster, Mr. Pendlebury, Mr. Kay and Mr. John 
Jollie, should meet at Mr. Thomas Jollie's for the pur- 
pose on May 16. But they all failed, and only Mr. Issot 
came out of Craven. He and Mr. Jollie proceeded to 
the work ; but when they had made some progress, 
they began to think that two ministers were too few 
for the purpose, so that the work was adjourned to the 
6th of June. They applied to Mr. Heywood, who 
agreed to join them ; and met at Mr. Jollie's Mr. Frank- 
land and his son, Mr. Benson, Mr. Greenwood of Lan- 
caster and Mr. Kay. It was intended that Mr. Matthew 
Smith, then newly settled at Kipping, should accompany 
Mr. Heywood, but he disappointed them. It was agreed 
that the previous examination should be sufficient. 
Then a difficulty presented itself, Mr. Jollie wishing 
that the people of his society should express their desire 
of dedicating him to God. Here was a principal dif- 
ference between the Presbyterians and Independents 
brought into question. Mr. Frankland was against it, 
■ ' as having no warrant, and importing some power." In 
the end it was not conceded to, and the service was con- 
ducted in the usual manner, Mr. Jollie acting as mo- 
derator. 

Mr. Heywood takes notice of the long drought in 
April and May, 1681 ; and, as what he says presents us 
with a view of the popular notions of the time, it may 
bear transcription: — " I saw the dreadfullest sight of 
waste pastures in my travels that ever my eyes beheld ; 
scarce any green thing left in fields. I saw, both in 
Howarth parish and up towards Marsden, the strangest 
fires upon the moors that have been known, burning up 
the heath and dry mossy earth many miles forward, and 
could not be quenched. The beasts of the field began 
to smart and feel the effects of God's anger. Many 

x 



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strange incredible stories were told of many places ; of 
an ox speaking, saying, ' What should I plough for ? 
there 's more corn sown than will be reaped near 
Easingwold, in Yorkshire. It is confidently and credibly 
reported, that it rained wheat at Leicester in May ; also 
near Pontefract, and near Leeds ; several quantities were 
in many hands, but little solid nourishment therein I" 

On the 25th of May, died Mr. Gamaliel Marsden, who 
had been ejected in 1662 from one of the chapels in the 
parish of Halifax. He was one of the four sons, all 
Non-Conforming ministers, of Ralph Marsden, one of 
Mr. Heywood's predecessors at Coley. He had studied 
in Trinity College, Dublin, and was turned out there in 
1660 ; so that he had a kind of double ejectment. Came 
over to Liverpool, with few friends and little money, for, 
having paid his passage and bought a horse, he had but 
five pounds remaining. He came to Coley; " light first 
at my house in Northowram ; stayed under my window 
when we were at family prayer. We entertained him 
some nights. He then went to Joshua Bayley's of Aller- 
ton, where his brother Jeremiah had lately been minister, 
who made him welcome ; and he married a young wo- 
man in the family with forty pounds a-year. Was minister 
at Chapel-le-Brears ; out at Bartholomew '62. His wife 
died. He went into Holland ; returned ; was teacher 
to the church at Topcliffe ; married Mr. Marshall's wi- 
dow, who lived plentifully, comfortably. He died with 
honour, and was buried May 27. Left a competent 
estate to his friends, wife, having no child. Lent, gave, 
while he lived. Bequeathed twenty pounds to poor mi- 
nisters, widows, scholars, godly poor. Ordered by his 
last will Mr. John Pickering of Tingley and myself to 
assist his wife in the distribution of it ; for which we 
met at Mrs. Marsden's February 14, 1682; ordered it 
as wisely and equally as we could for doing most good. 
Thus, even thus, our dear Lord takes care of his children 
and their children." It further appears, from Mr. Hey- 
wood's account, that he was not a very fluent or ac- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



307 



ceptable preacher, but extremely useful in training up 
young men in academical learning, in which he was 
much employed. 

Mr. Heywood has some reflections on this case de- 
serving attention : — " Oh what a day I have lived to see 
this last twenty years ! near two thousand ministers 
turned out of public maintenance for their consciences, 
living only on God's providence, strangely preserved, 
maintained ; none that I know reduced to debts or ex- 
treme want ; many of them in a better condition than 
when they were turned out ; whereas many Conformists 
that stretched their consciences for a livelihood, or pre- 
ferment, are reduced to such exigencies as drive them 
into prisons or dangers, or a-begging to hard-hearted 
men. God hath found employment for some, friends 
for others, or cast in real or personal estates on others, 
and given credit and good repute to all conscientious 
suffering ministers, that though they were sent without 
staff or scrip, they have lacked nothing ; meipso adhuc 
testificante." 



x 2 



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CHAPTER XIV. 
1682—1686. 

SUPPOSED EFFECTS OF THE KING'S INDULGENCE.^ — EFFORTS TO PRE- 
VENT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DISSENTING INTEREST. ■ 

RENEWAL OF SEVERITIES. DIRECTED AGAINST THE YOUNGER MI- 
NISTERS. DR. HOOKE. VISIT TO THE ACADEMY, FREQUENT 

ALARMS. STATE OF NON-CONFORMITY IN YORKSHIRE. VISITS 

LONDON.- PUBLISHES HIS ISRAEL'S LAMENTATION. EXTRACTS. 

SETTLEMENT OF MR. ELLISON AS CURATE OF COLEY. VISITS YORK ; 

THE HEWLEYS. REFLECTIONS AT THE CLOSE OF 1683. FURTHER 

ALARMS. VISITS MANSFIELD AND NORTON. FUNERAL SERMON 

FOR MR. COTES. APPREHENDED. REFLECTIONS AT THE CLOSE OF 

1684. CONVICTED AT THE SESSIONS AT WAKEFIELD. — IN THE 

CASTLE AT YORK FROM JANUARY TO DECEMBER 1685. DEATH OF 

THE KING. RELEASE. RETURNS HOME. COMPOUNDS FOR HIS 

FINE. VISITS VARIOUS FRIENDS. 

The persons who saw nothing but evil in Non-Con- 
formity and Dissent, speak of the Indulgence which was 
granted by the king as a fatal measure of policy, and as 
preventing the accomplishment of that re-union which, 
in their opinion, a continuance of the severe policy of 
the Earl of Clarendon would at length have effected. 
Sir John Reresby, a Yorkshire baronet, and an acute 
observer of the progress of public affairs, says, that from 
the date of those Indulgences there was an utter impos- 
sibility of stopping the progress of Dissent, and prevent- 
ing the establishment of the Dissenting Interest, as it 
began to be called. And no doubt the desire of the mi- 
nisters to return to the Church would not be quickened, 
nor their pertinacity in demanding the concessions which 
they required diminished, when they found, by experi- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



309 



ence, how ready men were to form themselves into so- 
cieties, to put themselves under their spiritual guidance, 
to acknowledge them as genuine ministers of Christianity, 
to receive all the Sacraments at their hands, to prepare 
suitable places of worship for them, and to form an united 
body on which they might with some confidence re]y. They 
saw in this the means of continued extensive and perma- 
nent employment and usefulness, which rendered the loss 
of their stations in the Church less grievous, when the 
retirement from the Church is looked at with reference 
to their own personal interests ; and they saw also that 
there were people not merely to recognise them in the 
character of their pastor, but who were willing to make 
provision for a succession of ministers like them, by 
supporting academies in which young men might be 
trained in University learning, and, in due time, be ad- 
mitted into the ministry by such ordination as they had 
themselves received. We have seen that, even on the 
slender reliance on a Declaration which had no support 
from Parliament, and which might be revoked at any 
moment at the will of him who issued it, the ministers 
had such confidence in the continued attachment and 
support of the persons who adhered to them, that many 
of them connected the future fortunes of their children 
with this new order of things, training them, as far as 
possible, in their own prejudices and opinions, that they 
might succeed them in the new kind of ministry which 
was making its appearance in England. 

This state of things was not viewed without alarm on 
the other side, and very strenuous efforts were at this 
period made to retain the Presbyterian body in the 
Church. Very persuasive appeals were made to them, 
grounded on the importance of preserving the Church 
of this kingdom entire, as the great protection and bul- 
wark of the Protestant interest throughout Europe, on 
the excellence of the Church itself, and on the evils 
which attend ecclesiastical disunion among a people who 
are united politically. Many friends of the Church took a 



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higher ground, and called upon the persons who coun- 
tenanced the ejected ministry in the measures which 
were now pursued, to beware of incurring the guilt of 
schism. Replies were published by some of the most 
eminent Non-Conformists. All this was legitimate war- 
fare. But the principle of No Concession in any point 
was rigidly maintained by the public authorities. 

It would have been well if the friends of the Church 
had contented themselves with this mode of warfare ; 
but the attempt was now made to regain the advantage 
which had been lost by recurring to the former odious 
measures of severity, and the last three years of the 
reign of Charles the Second are amongst the darkest in 
the history of Non-Conformity ; there was more of fining 
and imprisoning (the worst possible way of attempting 
to convince serious-minded men that they are in error), 
both of the elder ministers who had left the Church 
twenty years before, and also now of the younger who 
had lately been ordained by them, and who were ready 
to take their places ; and in no part of the kingdom was 
this new persecution carried on with more of bitterness 
than in the part with which Mr. Heywood was con- 
nected. Two young ministers, who had been pupils in 
the academy of Frankland, and who were settled in the 
ministry at Leeds and at Sheffield, were marked for this 
persecution, as examples, it may seem, to deter the other 
pupils of that seminary, namely., Thomas Whitaker, and 
Timothy Jollie, the son of Thomas Jollie of Altham. They 
were imprisoned for a long period in the Castle at York, 
and the death during that period of the young wife of 
Mr. Whitaker made his case the more grievous : but 
they both bore it with a fortitude such that the example 
operated to encourage, not to deter. This is almost 
always the case. Persecution of an earnest religious 
party rarely succeeds when it stops short of extermina- 
tion ; and it ought by this time to have been apparent 
to everybody that these severe measures could never 
effect the purpose designed by the institution of them, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



311 



and that if a frame of a church could not be settled in 
which all might be comprehended, those who would not, 
or who could not, conform to the Church as restored, 
must be allowed to pursue their own course, as long as 
the peace and security of the empire were not seriously 
endangered by them. 

We return to Mr. Hey wood. 

1682. 

His course during this year was much the same as in 
the preceding years since the recall of the Licenses ; and 
my notices of it will consist of but a few detached anec- 
dotes. 

On Friday, February 27, he describes an act of pri- 
vate devotion in which his mind appears to have been 
wrought up to a state of very intense feeling ; but it is 
noticed here for the purpose of showing that the vicar 
of Halifax continued his strenuous opposition. Mr. 
Hey wood mentions as one of the subjects of his 
prayers, the forgiveness of Dr. Hooke and of some 
others of his neighbours, who had uttered of late some 
very severe things against the Non-Conformists ; but 
particularly Dr. Hooke, who, on " the king's day," Ja- 
nuary 30, had " charged the murder of old King Charles 
on Non-Conformists by name. It troubled me, and 
God helped me to spread it before the Lord, and his 
late book also, as Hezekiah did Rabshakeh's letter." 

In May, he paid a visit to the Academy, then at Nat- 
land, near Kendal. His neighbour Jonathan Priestley 
accompanied him. They passed by Kildwick to Settle, 
and by Thornton near Ingleton (where a lady's daughter 
was the inn -keeper), to Kirkby Lonsdale, and thence to 
Natland. The day after his arrival all the family and 
the scholars, about twenty in number, were called to- 
gether, when Mr. Heywood delivered a discourse to 
them from 2 Chron. xxix, 11 # , which he had studied 

* Mr. Heywood's intimate familiarity with every part of Scrip- 
ture enabled him to select the texts of his discourses with much 



312 



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for the occasion. On the Saturday, Mr. Frankland be- 
ing indisposed and his wife from home, Mr. Heywood 
got together several of the scholars in his room, and 
they spent some hours together in prayer and religious 
discourse. On Sunday, there was a very great assem- 
bly at Mr. Frankland's house. Mr. Heywood conducted 
the service, which lasted for five hours. In the evening 
Mr. Frankland and he rode to Oxenholme, about a mile 
distant, to visit Mrs. Archer, " a sad widow, her husband 
lying dead in the house." On Monday morning he took 
his leave in prayer. At Lancaster he was entertained by 
Mr. Greenwood, and walking about the town was mis- 
taken for the new vicar. The next day Mr. Mayor and 
Mr. Ashhurst came to visit him, and he went to Kellet, 
three miles from Lancaster, where he preached at Mr. 
Benson's house, to a considerable company. He arrived 
the next day at Richard Mitchel's, when he learned 
that several friends were staying at John Hey's for his 
preaching. " I hasted thither, found them together, 
J. H. praying. I preached that evening on 1 Cor. vi, 
1 1 , which was the first sermon that ever was preached 
in that new-built meeting-place and pulpit*." The next 
morning people came to Richard Mitchel's expecting to 
hear him preach, to whom he repeated his sermon, and 
proceeding to Riddlesden-hall in Bingley, he found peo- 
ple there also staying for him. From thence he went to 
Joshua Walker's at Rushworth- hall, called on Mr. Smith 
at Kipping, and so home. Thus eagerly were his ser- 
vices coveted. 

His feeling respecting persons whom he regarded as 
intruders upon the ministry is strikingly illustrated in 
the following anecdote : — <e Upon Wednesday morning, 

advantage, and the selection is often very happily made. In this in- 
stance, the words are, " My sons, be not now negligent : for the 
Lord hath chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that 
ye should minister unto him, and burn incense." 

* This must mean the meeting-house at Winterburn, between 
Settle and Skipton, the only one which arose in Craven under the 
old Dissent. It was the place which Mrs. Lambert attended. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



313 



June 28, came Ralph Leeming, one that had been my 
servant, to invite me to his father's funeral, old Joseph 
Blamire at Bradford ; but I told him ' I was for Lan- 
cashire that day.' 1 1 hear, Ralph,' said I, 8 you are 
turned a preacher !' He said, ' There are few preachers 
now-a-days, but readers, expounders.' I asked him 
' What call he had ?' He said, ' He had a call from God. 5 
I told him, ' He must have either an ordinary call, and 
then he must be tried by such as had discerning ; or 
extraordinary , and then let him show it by extraordinary 
gifts and miracles.' He said, ' A man is fittest to judge 
of his call,' &c. I told him what the Apostle said, 
1 Cor. vii, 20, ' Let every man abide in the calling ;' I 
told him ' of his calling to be a cloth-miller ; then he pre- 
sumed to be a physician, and now a preacher, which I 
knew he was not fit for.' He said, ' I was not his judge ; 
that Paul was a tent-maker and preacher, so might he 
follow all these callings.' I told him, ' Paul was ' an 
Apostle, not of men nor by man,' an extraordinary per- 
son, not fit to be imitated.' Thus he and T talked a con- 
siderable time at the gates. God put me into an unusual 
heat: (1.) to protest against the course he was for 
taking, and told him he sinned in it, and God would not 
bless him in presuming upon such a weighty work with- 
out a call ; (2.) I reminded him of his former profession, 
above twenty years ago, when he lived with me ; and, 
indeed, I fear he hath lost that religion he seemed once 
to have." This last reflection sounds a little uncha- 
ritably. 

June 30, Being in Lancashire, he preached at widow 
Travers' in Blackley ; at Mr. Barlow's in Manchester ; 
visited the ministers living there, and Mr. Serjeant at 
Stand. The house at Bolton at which at this period he 
was generally received was that of his brother-in-law, 
John Okey. 

July 9. Sunday. "I heard that the officers would 
come at ten o'clock. I appointed to begin at five o'clock 
in the morning. I did begin near six, preached till nine, 



314 



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on Rev. xxii, 14. Began at one in the afternoon, 
preached till four ; God helped. The officers were very 
civil and courteous ; stayed a little ; came exactly at ten. 
Blessed be God for one day more." This was one of 
the ways by which private good feeling interposed be- 
tween oppressive laws and the objects of them. Notice, 
we see, was given of the time when the officers would 
arrive. 

But the danger appears to have increased. On Sun- 
day, July 16, he was to preach at Alverthorpe. " I got 
up by four o'clock ; was helped to commit myself to God 
in this time of great danger ; so went to Mr. Nailor's. 
We resolved upon going to the meeting-place, though it 
had not been used some days before. We began at eight 
o'clock, preached till ten ; began again at twelve, were 
till after three ; enjoyed a sweet quiet Sabbath !" 

August 24 was observed as a solemn fast. " Sit hie 
ultimus dies in clade Bartholomed. Die Amen, Domine /" 

He speaks again of this fast in another volume, to 
which this epigraph is prefixed, — " Oliver Hey wood 
bought this little book to write reflections upon yearly, 
and solemn engagements to be the Lord's ;" and in a 
way which may assist us in forming a conception of the 
state of the Non- Conformists at that period in these 
parts of Yorkshire : — " On August 24, 1682, that which 
they call Bartholomew Day, twenty years after our woe- 
ful, mournful separation from the public assemblies, we 
had a solemn fast at William Clay's. My heart was very 
much carried out for our restoration. There were ex- 
traordinary meltings of soul in most that were present. 
On August 30, '82, at mine own house, we kept a so- 
lemn day of thanksgiving to God for the public liberty we 
have enjoyed in my house without interruption above ten 
years, notwithstanding many warrants issued out against 
us, as well as others. Yet we have been secured, through 
the moderation of our officers, as instrumental, when all 
the societies round about us have been sadly broken 
and scattered. Mr. Smith at Kipping, Mr. Dawson at 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



315 



Closes # , Mr. Jos. Holdsworth at Heckmonwyke, meet 
not in the day, but in the night, for these several 
months. So at Leeds, Morley, Topcliffe, Alverthorpe, 
Mr. Whitehurst's at Lidiat, all have been in some way 
hindered in the places they used to meet in and the times 
they met on. And in Craven they have been fined. At 
Sheffield they were all taken off ; some troubled at Ses- 
sions ; watched. At Jo. Armitage's they meet in the 
night. At Robert Binns' hitherto obstructed ; scarce 
any place in the country free. Mr. Ward of York 
hunted, fined forty pounds ; scattered : scarce any place 
in the country free, except Hull. And yet we, even we, 
at this poor Northowram, have been quiet, never in- 
formed against, disturbed, molested ; only two or three 
days we began a little sooner than at other times, but 
God brought full companies, and that was but when we 
knew what times the officers would come, immediately 
before the Sessions, and then returned into our old 
channel again, and have now vast multitudes that flock 
to us from all parts of the country, so many meetings 
being broken. This duly considered, I looked upon it as 
our great duty to return God solemn thanks among his 
people for these discriminating acts of providence, that 
our fleece is wet, when others' are dry, and accordingly 
the aforesaid day we endeavoured to ' pay our vows.' Mr. 
Dawson and Mr. Halliday helped us to praise God." 

November 1, He was at Leeds, where he dined with 
Mr. Hickson. Mr. Thoresby and Mr. Boyse accompa- 
nied him to Mr. Middleborough's, at whose house he 
was a frequent visitor f. 

November 5. " Began my work at Alverthorpe meet- 

* This was in Bir stall. Mr. Dawson about this time became mi- 
nister at the chapel of Morley. 

f This Mr. Thoresby was Ralph Thoresby the antiquary and vir- 
tuoso, who also kept a diary, in which, under this day, is the follow- 
ing entry : — " With worthy Mr. Heywood and Mr. Boyse at Mr. 
E. H.'s ; with whom rode after dinner to honest Mr. Middlebrook's, 
steward above twenty years to the Earl of Sussex, to hear some re- 
markable stories of old Sir John Savile." 



316 



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ing ; expounded, sung, prayed, preached not above a 
quarter of an hour before intelligence was brought that 
the chief constable and officers were coming. We broke 
off* ; they came ; pursued us with rage ; hindered us all 
day. At night T preached at Jo. Holdsworth's ; lodged 
at W. Kirk's ; had a gracious providence that day in 
my escape out of their hands. Monday, in the morning, 
I was cut short in my closet work, it being reported the 
officers would come again to search for me." 

December 7. " After my morning's work my wife 
and T rode to Halifax, to the funeral of my dear friend 
Mr. John Brearcliffe, apothecary in Halifax, my old 
hearer ; a very active, useful man. Dr. Hooke preached 
on 2 Cor. v, 15 ; commended him, as indeed he had 
good reason." 

December 18, He set out on a visit among his friends 
in the south of Yorkshire and at Walling-wells, visiting 
Mr. Cotton, Mr. Benton at Barnsley, Mr. Wordsworth 
at Swathe-hall, and Mr. Gill at Car-house, where he 
found Mr. Prime. At Rotherham he visited young Mr. 
Shaw, who was dying # . He then proceeded to Mr. 
Hatfield's at Laughton, and so to Mr. Taylor's, where 
he found Mr. Hancock and Mr. Denton f. There was 
a full assembly at a monthly fast. On the Sunday there 
was again a full assembly. On the next day he was pre- 
vailed upon to accompany the family to London. The 
ladies rode in the carriage, the gentlemen on horseback. 

* This was the only son of John Shaw, who had been vicar 
of Rotherham and deeply engaged in the political affairs of the 
time of the Commonwealth. He has left, in the prefaces to various 
sermons preached by him, some curious notices of his own escapes 
in the time of the Civil Wars, besides a large account of his own 
life, to which reference has been made before. The young man died. 

f Nathan Denton, who was ordained at Hemsworth in 1658, " by 
the Presbytery of the West Riding," says Calamy {Continuation, &c, 
p. 950). He lived during the greater part of his life at Bolton- 
upon-Dearne, in the neighbourhood of Great Houghton, where he 
preached ; and was one of the very few Ejected Ministers then alive, 
1713, when Dr. Calamy published his Account of them ; and at his 
death in 1720 was thought to be the last survivor. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



317 



Sir Ralph Knight was of the party. They reached Not- 
tingham that day, where Mr. Hey wood visited Mr. Whit- 
lock and Mr. Reynolds, the two inseparable friends, 
who were both ejected in that town. Here they dis- 
missed the private carriage, and got into Mr. Hawkins' 
stage-coach. We obtain authentic information of the 
rate at which these conveyances travelled in those days. 
They reached Leicester the first day, where they slept. 
On the second day they reached Northampton, and 
stayed to sleep there. To Dunstable was the third day's 
journey; and they arrived in London on the fourth. 
The coach took them to the Anchor in Smithfield. 

While in London he was entertained first at the 
house of Mr. John Denham at the Postern by Basinghall- 
street, opposite Lorimer's-hall, where Dr. Samuel An- 
nesley preached, whom he heard on Sunday, the day but 
one after his arrival, and Mr. Hughes in the afternoon, 
preaching himself at the same place in the evening. 

1683. 

Mr. Heywood spent the whole of the month of Ja- 
nuary in London, mixing most with the Non-Conform- 
ing ministers, who were preaching openly, though often 
interrupted by the magistracy, joining with them in 
private fasts and in their public services, and visiting 
those who were in prison. He heard also some Con- 
formist preachers, particularly Dr. Burnet, Dr. Sharp, 
Dr. Tillotson and Dr. Fowler, the latter of whom he 
heard deliver a very excellent sermon against perse- 
cution. 

The Non-Conforming ministers whom he heard were, 
Mr. Oakes, Mr. Howe at Pinners'-hall ; Mr. Lockyer, 
Mr. Nathaniel Vincent, at whose meeting-place in South- 
wark Mr. Heywood and Mr. Maddocks kept a fast with 
Mr. Vincent ; Mr. Taylor, in Mr. Jacomb's place at 
Haberdashers'-hall ; Mr. Slater, Mr. Jacomb at Pin- 
ners'-hall ; Mr. Jeremiah Marsden, then calling himself 



318 



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Ralphson # , Mr. Turner in Fetter Lane and Mr. Stret- 
ton. He went on one occasion to Pinners'-hall to hear 
Mr. Alsop, but found the place so crowded that he could 
not obtain admittance. 

The trial of Mr. Vincent took place while Mr. Hey- 
wood was in London, and he twice visited him in prison. 
He visited also Mr. Franklin, confined in the New Prison. 
He preached for Mr. Calamy at Cutlers'-hall. 

Mr. Heywood left London on Thursday, February 1, 
and came that day to Garson in Hertfordshire, the 
seat of " Esquire Marsh," where his son, Mr. John 
Heywood, was then the chaplain. The next day was 
a solemn day of fasting and prayer at Mr. Marsh's, 
where Mr. Grew and old Mr. Hill joined with the two 
Mr. Heywoods in the service. He stayed with Mr. 
Marsh till the Monday, and on the Sunday conducted a 
service which began about seven in the morning, because 
of threatenings of soldiers coming from St. Albans • had 
done at nine ; began again at eleven and continued till 
near two. He met the coach at St. Albans on Monday, 
in which was the party with whom he had come up to 
London. They slept, as before, at Dunstable, North- 
ampton and Leicester. 

While in town his tract, intitled, ' Israel's Lamenta- 
tion after the Lord,' was printed. Mr. Thomas Park- 
hurst, the general bookseller of the Non-Conformists, 
by whom it was published, "in reading the epistle, 
found some smart reflections, which he communicated 
to me, thinking it was not safe to print them, being then 
a very hazardous time. Upon reading of them, I thought 
so too, so expunged them, which I am heartily glad I 
did ; for when it came down into the country Dr. H. 

* This was one of the sons of Ralph Marsden, once the minister 
of Coley ; of whom there is an excellent account in Dr. Calamy's 
Continuation, &c. (p. 942 — 945), being an abridgement of a manu- 
script left by Mr. Marsden, or Ralphson, himself, intitled, Contem- 
platio Vita miserabilis. I have inquired for this manuscript in vain. 
He was one of the most rigid of the Separatists. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



319 



[Hooke] sent for it, and greedily, and, I fear, captiously, 
read it over ; said it was a seditious piece. Another said 
it was full of faction. Consulting with his clergy, they 
all censured it deeply ; yea, Justice H. [Horton # ] had it, 
and Sir John Kaye, and a confident story was brought 
me from Halifax, that, on Monday, April 16, 1683, the 
justices met at Huddersfield to consider my book. I was 
also summoned to the Sessions that week, though not 
on that account. My fears were great, my trouble sur- 
prising : and the rather, (1.) because in writing I had 
brought myself into trouble, and began to question my 
call to write ; (2.) because my adversaries seemed to 
have got the advantage against me they had long been 
seeking ; (3.) some of my friends censured me, and 
some at M. [Manchester] said I had laid myself open ; 
another gave hints as though I had not done wisely ; 
(4.) a godly eminent minister, to whom I showed the 
passage they excepted against, shaked the head, and said 
it was true that I writ, viz., that a law was made to 
thrust out two thousand ministers, August 24, 1662, 
but, saith he, ' They will interpret it as complaining 
of the laws ; but/ saith he, c you must stand by it.' 
Upon this I was still more troubled, dejected, could not 
tell what to say. But, after awhile, God helped me to 
humble my soul before God, beg pardon of what I had 
done amiss against God and men, committing myself 
and my all to God, comforting myself that what I had 
writ was in the uprightness of my heart to do good, and 
that I had no seditious design in it. And, notwithstand- 
ing all that talk, T have reason to think there was no 
such thing, for to this day, which is May 28, 1683, I 
hear no more of it ; I mean, I hear nothing more of the 
justices concerning themselves about it." 

And now, what was this seditious passage, of the con- 
sequence of which Mr. Heywood had such dismal ap- 
prehensions ? It is, as may be believed from what we 

* Not Joshua, who was of a different spirit, but one of his 
nephews, either Thomas of Barkisland, or William of Howroyd. 



320 



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have seen of his political bearing, a very harmless one ; 
being no more than this : — 

" An objection may be framed against all that I have 
said. You will say, ' What is all this canting for ? How 
doth it concern us ? Have we not public ordinances ? 
Doth not the Gospel nourish ? Is there not excellent 
preaching in public places? The generality have no 
reason to complain, since we have Christian magistrates, 
a glorious Church, learned preachers ; nay, with respect 
to others that pretend tenderness of conscience, they 
complain before they are hurt ; have they not their se- 
parate meetings in a public way without disturbance ? 
Little reason have any to make this ado in lamenting ; 
what cause have you to lament ?' 

" I answer, as Cleophas : — ' Art thou only a stranger 
in our Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which 
are come to pass there in these days ? ' If you ask ' What 
things ?' Do I need to inform you, or rub up your me- 
mories by telling you, that, twenty years ago, two thou- 
sand ministers, then found in peaceable possession of 
their places of worship, were dispossessed and ejected 
by the Act of Uniformity , commencing August 24, 1662, 
and shortly after, in 1665, were prohibited meeting 
together above four for religious worship, and another 
Act prohibiting them from coming or being within five 
miles of any such places where they had preached, or a 
corporation ; and were severely menaced and punished 
by a second Act against Conventicles, with sharper pe- 
nalties ; and though the King's Majesty set them at 
liberty for a season, yet that was quickly retracted, and 
many could have little benefit by it. Now, whether 
the silencing of ministers be not an obstructing of the 
Gospel and of ordinances, judge you ; and if you say you 
are not concerned in this case, I shall not speak to you, 
but turn my discourse to others." Surely a very harm- 
less, or at least a very excusable appeal. 

There are more striking passages in other parts of the 
book, and some which well exemplify the peculiar kind 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



321 



of eloquence in which Mr. Heywood's writings abound, 
which have a certain richness that may be resembled to 
that of the cloth of gold of our ancestors, his own 
strong vernacular English closely interwoven with the 
golden threads of the language of Holy Writ, 

" Righteous art thou, O Lord, in all thy ways, and 
holy in all thy works, must dust and ashes say when 
they speak to thee or plead with thee. All our Israel 
have transgressed thy law, and despised thy Gospel, 
therefore hast thou brought upon us a great evil, such 
as hath scarce ever been done under the whole heaven : 
not three shepherds cut off in a month, but two thou- 
sand in one day; and this not for a day, or month, or 
year, but even twenty years already ; neither is there any 
among us that knoweth how long this sad cloud may be 
upon us. Thy will be done : thou hast punished us less 
than our iniquities deserve ; but to the Lord our God 
belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled 
against thee ; and shall not the Judge of all the earth do 
right ? Look down from heaven and behold from the 
habitation of thy holiness and thy glory. Shall the 
needy always be forgotten ? shall the expectation of the 
poor perish for ever?" 

" Let thy dead men live, thy slain witnesses be called 
up and ascend to heaven in a cloud ; let there be a 
snaking, that these dry bones may come together. Come, 
oh wind, and breathe on them, that they may live. Cause 
thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary, for the Lord's 
sake ; in midst of judgement remember mercy, and at 
last revisit thy work : give us the opening of the mouth ; 
set thy light on a candlestick ; hold the stars in thy 
right hand ; let thy people's eyes see their teachers ; give 
us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man ; purify 
the sons of Levi, that they may offer to the Lord an 
offering in righteousness." 

" This has been a very dark and gloomy day, a day 
of rebuke and blasphemy, a day of scattering and 
treading down in the valley of vision ; ministers and 



322 



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their flocks rent asunder ; solemn assemblies sorrowfully 
broken up ; and silent Sabbaths, by some profaned ; 
ignorance increasing, conversion work suspended, sin- 
ners hardened, young beginners in religion discouraged, 
atheism abounding, persecution revived, and thousands 
of precious souls wandering about as sheep that have no 
shepherd ; many public places being ill supplied, and 
guilt brought upon the nation, pressing us down towards 
destruction ; yea, such sins as leave a people remediless, 
mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, 
misusing his prophets, till the wrath of God arise 
against us, till there be no remedy, or no healing." — 
" It is dreadful, indeed, to see debauchery in the land 
abounding, and the breasts of men vent personal malice 
against God's dearest children for no other fault than 
worshipping God, and praying for their persecutors." 

One quotation more: — "While wicked Gadarenes 
are, by words and works, bidding the blessed Jesus de- 
part out of our coasts, it becomes us solemnly to invite 
him, to open the doors of our hearts to him, and give 
him free welcome, saying, ' Lord, abide with us and 
thus he may be constrained to tarry with us. And 
though in this dreadful tempest with which the ship of 
the Church is sorely tossed, so that it is covered with 
waves, our Lord be asleep, yet faith and prayer will 
awaken him ; and though we cannot peremptorily say he 
will save our persons or privileges, or his Church in 
England, yet we may with some confidence say, he will 
certainly save Zion, and build his Church somewhere in 
the world ; he will save our own souls, and it may be 
we shall be hid in the day of God's anger ; it may be that 
the Lord of Hosts will be precious unto the remnant of 
Joseph. Who knoweth, if he will return and repent, 
and leave a blessing behind him ?" 

The people of Coley seem to have been unfortunate 
in the curates who took the place of Mr. Heywood. In 
the twenty years after the Act of Uniformity had re- 
moved him from the chapel, they had not fewer than ten 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



323 



in succession, the last of whom, however, Mr. Timothy 
Ellison, was one whom Mr. Heywood much approved. 
He was born near Preston ; was of Puritan extraction ; 
Mr. Nathaniel Heywood used often to preach at his 
father's house. " This young man hath good parts, 
prays well, preacheth zealously, and, 'tis said, lives 
honestly : people flock to him abundantly ; are much 
affected: blessed be God!" He came to Coley in the 
summer of 1682, and we find him living on friendly 
terms with Mr. Heywood, who not unfrequently, in 
1683 and other years, formed part of his congregation, 
and he remained at Coley till the time of Mr. Heywood's 
decease. 

After several preaching excursions in the early months 
of the year, he went again to Mr. Frankland's, who had 
changed his residence, the academy being then at Calton- 
hall in Craven, the seat of the Lamberts. On the 26th 
of June he went to York, where he was entertained at 
the house of Mr. Andrew Taylor, at whose house the 
Non-Conformists of York usually met for worship before 
the chapel in Saint Saviour Gate was erected. He was 
also much at Lady Hewet's, where Mrs. Lambert, who 
was then at York, sometimes joined them. He visited 
Mr. Timothy Jollie, then undergoing his imprisonment 
in the Castle. He went also to Bell-hall, Sir John Hew- 
ley's country residence, a few miles from York. Here, 
he says, he " discoursed with that sad lady on her kins- 
woman's account ;" meaning Lady Hewley. He prayed 
and preached with Mr. Hodgson the chaplain, and on 
the next day " discoursed, and God helped, with Lady 
Hewley, to comfort her about that young woman's mis- 
carriage in the family." When he returned to York, 
there was a meeting at Lady Hewet's, at which Mr. 
Ward preached as well as Mr. Heywood. He visited 
several other of the Presbyterians of York, whom he 
names, and departed secretly through the postern, Sir 
John Reresby, the governor of York, having placed 
soldiers at the gates, to intercept him, as it would seem 

y 2 



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he understood it to be ; but the notices are not clear. 
He came to Alverthorpe, " a place and time of dan- 
ger," where he preached on a Sunday, to a great assem- 
bly, without molestation. 

The apprehensions of his friends gathered strength : — 
" Wednesday, July 4, in the morning, when I was at 
prayer in my study, R. J. came purposely from Horbury 
to tell me of two maids set in the house of correction, 
because they would not inform who were at meeting ; 
and to warn me to look to myself. Mr, Dawson and I 
went into Warley ; Mr. Holdsworth met us. Thursday, 
spent most of the day in taking a catalogue of my books, 
readying them, foreseeing a storm. Saturday, Mr. Oates 
came that night to warn me against preaching. Sunday, 
I had appointed to begin at six o'clock ; people came. 
Before I had preached half an hour, intelligence came 
that the officers were coming. I desisted ; we scattered. 
Mr. O. and the constable came ; I was gone to cha- 
pel [that is, to the public chapel at Coley] ; came at 
noon ; preached after dinner to a considerable com- 
pany." — The alarms of this kind are now so frequent 
that T do not think it necessary to take notice of every 
one of them. On the 15th of July, on account of these 
apprehensions, he had service at four in the morning^. 

Of his private devotions, which were incessant, I have 
said little ; they were also frequently, at this time, very 
intense. But it may be observed, that he enters in his 
diary, under July 27, that he had that day made a vow 
to spend two hours every day in secret prayer, one in the 
morning, and another at four or five o'clock. 

The people in Lancashire, where he spent the first 
fortnight of the month of August, were in the same state 
of apprehension. 

* On Sunday, the 1 6th of December, he enters in his diary, that 
they were " called up betwixt two and three o'clock by two young 
men that came out of Birstall parish, hearing I preached at three 
o'clock in the night. We rose. God helped in prayer ; near break 
of day I rode to J. B. ; preached there till twelve at noon." 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 3*25 

I conclude what I have to say on the present year 
with the following declaration, which he made in his 
private note-book on the 3rd of December: — " Dost 
thou repent that thou didst not conform, when fair 
offers were made thee at St. Martin's in York, many 
years ago, when thou wert under violent persecutions by 
the Spiritual Court ? Dost thou not envy them that live 
in pomp and prosperity, and wish thyself in their con- 
dition ? My soul shall answer, and upon good adver- 
tisement w T rite it down this 3rd of December, 1683, 
above twenty-one years after our doleful turning out of 
our public station ; that I am so well satisfied in my 
refusing subscription and conformity to the terms en- 
joined by law for the exercise of my public ministry, 
that, notwithstanding all the taunts, rebukes and affronts 
I have had from men, the weary travels many thousand 
miles, the hazardous meetings, plunderings, imprison- 
ings, exercise of faith and patience about worldly sub- 
sistence, banishings from my own home, coming home 
with fears in the night, — which are the least part of my 
affliction under this dispensation, — for banishing from 
my people, stopping my mouth, which hath occasioned 
many sad temptations, discouragements, lest God should 
be angry with me, lay me aside, and make no use of 
me, which have caused many sad thoughts, griefs, and 
searchings of heart. Notwithstanding all this, I am so 
fully satisfied in my conscience with my Non-Conformity 
as a minister, that it is the way of God, and I have so 
much peace in my spirit that what I do is for the main, 
according to the word, that if I knew of all the troubles 
beforehand, and were to begin again, I would persist in 
this course to my dying day ; and, if God call me to it, 
seal it with my blood. For, to me, full Conformity 
would be sinful, and we must resist to death, striving 
against sin." 

1684. 

This year was like the preceding, Mr. Heywood 
persisting in preaching, and the alarms becoming 



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more frequent and the danger of magisterial animad- 
version greater. 

" Sunday, March 23, in the morning, T durst not 
begin, because of the officers ; they came about seven 
o'clock ; showed me their warrant from the Judge of 
Assize to take up Conventiclers ; they were civil. When 
they were gone I repeated to a few ; went to chapel 
forenoon and after ; at night preached Martha Bland's 
funeral sermon at Norwood-green." 

Amongst his journeys of this year was one among 
his friends in the south of Yorkshire, and extended to 
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. After some days 
spent at Ravenfield with Mr. Westby, where almost 
every waking hour was spent in some manner of social 
worship or religious instruction, he went to his friends 
at Laugh ton and Walling- wells, and from thence to 
Mansfield, to visit Mr. Billingsley and Mr. Porter, 
two ministers who resided there. He consulted with 
Mr. Billingsley about placing with him J. Senior, a 
youth whom he wished to be educated for a minister. 
He visited also Mr. Whitlock and Mr. Reynolds, the 
two Nottingham ministers, who were then living at 
Mansfield, a non-corporate town, and Mr. Firth also, 
the vicar, who lived, as Calamy says, in great harmony 
with the Non- Conforming ministers who settled near 
him, " accounting it no schism that they helped his 
people in the way to heaven." He returned to Walling- 
wells, and so to Firbeck, where he kept a fast at Mr. 
Staniforth's, being assisted by Mr. Beebee, another Non- 
Conforming minister*. On May 1, he came to Raven- 
field and Rotherham, where he received a legacy be- 

* This Mr, Beebee was an Oxford man, and had been chaplain to 
the regiment of Colonel Knight in General Monk's army, Mr. Hey- 
wood's friend, Sir Ralph Knight. Calamy, who gives a good ac- 
count of Mr. Beebee (Continuation, &c, pp. 1000 — 1002), says, that 
he often preached after the Restoration in the house of Sir Ralph 
Knight, who is represented, on Mr. Beebee's authority, to have been 
in the secret of General Monk's design, and to have encouraged him 
when he felt the difficulty and danger with which it was beset. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



327 



queathed to him by Mrs. Clayton ; and so to Mr. Gill's 
at Car-house. On the 3rd, he went to Attercliffe, where 
he visited Mr. Spencer, Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Bloom. 
Then went on with Mr. Henry Gill and his wife to The 
Oaks at Norton, Mr. H. Gill's house # , where he spent 
two nights, praying and preaching in the family on the 
Sunday till twelve ; again praying with a few ; " but at 
four o'clock, after public work was over at Norton where 
Mr. Trickett preacheth, there were many neighbours, and 
I prayed and preached ; Mr. Wood, Mr. Seddon and 
Mr. Rose, three ministers, stayed and discoursed with 
me." On the 5th, he went to Sheffield, where he visited 
Mr. Prime, and Mr. Rowland Hancock, who was then 
ill, and died in the April following, and so to Bull- 
house, and thence home. 

The ministers whom we find engaged with Mr. Hey- 
wood in fasts and thanksgivings near his own home at 
this period were Mr. Dawson, Mr. Smith, Mr. Holds- 
worth, and Mr. Ray, who had succeeded Mr. Dawson at 
the Closes. 

Tuesday, June 3, he preached a funeral sermon on the 
death of his friend, Mr. Cotes of Rawden. It was deli- 
vered at Idle at Thomas Ledyard's house, " to a con- 
siderable number of his hearers." He then rode to 
Bramhope to visit Mr. Dyneley, with whom he found 
Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Waterhouse of Bradford. 

August 17, Sunday: "I began about five o'clock, 
went to prayer, read my text, but immediately Halifax 

* Norton is a village in the north of Derbyshire, four miles from 
Sheffield, where most of the families, at this period, were Non-Con- 
formists. Mr. Henry Gill was a brother of Colonel John Gill of 
Car-house, a family nearly related to Dr. Saunderson, the Bishop of 
Lincoln, whose life was written by Isaac Walton. Mr. Henry Gill's 
daughter and heiress married Mr. Bagshaw, and carried The Oaks to 
that family, in whom the estate still remains. There has been a 
Presbyterian congregation at Norton with a regular succession of 
ministers to the present time. They met for many years at the Hall, 
where resided the families of Offley and Shore, great patrons of Pres- 
byterian N on- Conformity at Norton, and in all the parts around. 



328 



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bailiffs came upon us, broke in upon us, scattered us ; 
showed me a warrant ; engaged me to appear before 
Justice Horton ; so went away. I went with my wife 
to James Titley's ; preached my sermon there to a few ; 
dined there ; came to the chapel ; went home ; preached 
at J. L.'s ; had a full assembly, great assistance, on 
Luke ii, 29, 30 : it was a sad, yet sweet day." Mon- 
day, in the morning, being to appear before the justice 
of peace : * ' God helped me mercifully by his Spirit to 
commend myself into his hands by a solemn hour of 
prayer, and then addressed myself to go ; met the bailiffs, 
who guarded me thither ; accused me there ; Mr. Hor- 
ton was moderate ; bound me over to the Sessions ; J. 
P. and J. B. were sureties. I returned home with them 
to the joy of my friends and neighbours." Further, 

On October 9, "rode to Wakefield ; called at Mr. 
Hawden's ; went to Mr. Hedlar's ; dined with J. K. and 
M. F. ; visited Mr. Root and others ; did business ; came 
to Mr. R. Harrison's ; lodged there that night ; slept 
little. Friday morning : arising, I was much helped in 
prayer, quickened, encouraged in the affairs of that so- 
lemn day ; blessed be God : visited Mr. Crook in the 
forenoon ; returned ; was called ; things went hopefully ; 
was dismissed ; came to my quarters ; gave God thanks : 
attended afternoon ; entered my traverse ; came back ; 
lodged at Mr. Harrison's ; God was very gracious. Sa- 
turday morning : God did touch my heart with the sense 
of mercy in secret." 

1685. 

Within two days of the close of 1684 he writes in a 
more desponding strain than usual of the difficulties of 
his situation. " At this time," says he, " I am under 
the heaviest circumstances as to my liberty of doing God 
service and good to souls, that ever I was in all my life. 
Men have broken in upon us and scattered our meetings ; 
indicted me for a riot at the Sessions. 1 am bound in 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



329 



100Z. to traverse and to be of good behaviour. My ad- 
versaries are watching me narrowly to find me forfeiting 
my bond. They have catched W. N. ; charged him to 
be witness against me ; are laying wait for others ; few 
dare own me. Providence seems to make against me ; 
and that which is the heaviest of all, it is an occasion of 
some difference betwixt me and my dear wife ; for she, 
being naturally timorous, when we are at any time above 
the number of four, she is perplexed exceedingly, though 
it be not purposely but providentially ; and when I am 
to go and preach abroad, she is under great affright- 
ments, particularly last night when I went to W. H., 
lest we should be too many, and be discovered. And 
truly my zeal for God's glory and love for souls, and 
desire to do my Master's work on one side and endeared 
love for my wife, fears of being censured for rashness 
and indiscretion by prudent men, and making myself a 
prey to knaves on the other side, do so rack and torture 
my spirit that it almost makes me weary of my life ; and 
I am hard put to it that I know not what to do, but am 
oft forced to contradict my wife's mind to perform my 
promise. Sometimes God helps me by prayer to roll 
myself on God, and then I am easy. But, oh how oft 
am I at a loss ! " 

In a very short time after he penned these words he 
found himself in the prison from which he had been so 
long preserved by the forbearance of the magistracy and 
the good feeling of so many of his neighbours. 

On January 16 he was convicted at the Sessions at 
Wakefield of a riotous assembly at his house. He was 
sentenced to pay a fine of fifty pounds, and to find sure- 
ties for his good behaviour, which meant that he would 
forbear from preaching. The latter he could not com- 
ply with consistently with his great governing principle, 
that it was his bounden duty to be diligent in preaching 
the Gospel ; and as on this account he must have been 
content to go to prison, he refused to pay the fine also. 



330 



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though he took measures to obtain the remission of at 
least a portion of it. 

We have in the diary an account, day by day, of what 
occurred at Wakefield, and afterwards of what passed 
while he was confined in the castle at York. On the 
15th of January he went from his own house to Chick- 
enley on the way to Wakefield. He slept there at the 
house of one of his most valued friends, Mr. Josiah 
Oates, who accompanied him the next morning to 
Wakefield. The proceedings in court were soon over ; 
and he was delivered to the bailiff to be kept in custody 
till the fine was paid and he had entered into the secu- 
rities. On the next day a petition for the remission or 
abatement of his fine was read in open court, and the 
justices appeared willing to grant it, but only on condi- 
tion of his promising to be of good behaviour, which 
meant the forbearance to exercise his ministry. On the 
Sunday he was allowed so much liberty as to go to the 
parish church in the morning, but his request to do so 
in the afternoon was denied. He remained at Wakefield 
in the hands of the bailiff till Friday the 23rd, on which 
day his mittimus to the castle of York was made out, 
and he was delivered into the hands of Joseph Lock- 
wood, the York gaoler, who took his verbal engagement 
to surrender himself at the castle of York, delivering him 
to the intermediate charge of his two sons, who came to 
him that day, John, who was then domestic chaplain to 
Mr. Westby of Ravenfield, and Eliezer, who filled the 
same office in the house of Mr. Taylor of Walling- wells. 
They immediately set out towards York, and that night 
slept at Mr. Ralph Spencer's at Hunslet-hall near Leeds. 
At Leeds, as had been the case at Wakefield, he was 
cheered by the notice of several of his friends ; but he 
pressed forward to York, which place he reached in the 
afternoon, and went to an inn. In the evening he 
went to the house of Sir John Hewley, and early on the 
next morning (Sunday), " after prayer, we walked to Sir 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



331 



John Hewley's, where we spent that day. I prayed and 
preached in my lady's chamber, forenoon, on Psalm 
lxxiii, 25 * ; God helped. Dined there ; then went to 
church. After that I preached ; then walked to visit 
Lady Hewet, Mr. Earnshaw, aunt Darcy ; so returned 
to Thomas Fawber's." On the next day, at eleven 
o'clock, Joseph Lockwood, the gaoler, came, and took 
him and two other persons to the castle, and delivered 
him to James Butler, the head-gaoler. He " took leave 
of his sons that night in prayer with many tears." 

He found his friend, Mr. Whitaker, in the castle, and 
the gaoler, who throughout treated him very courteously, 
placed him in a good lodging immediately over that which 
Mr. Whitaker occupied. His wife soon joined him. 

Mr. Heywood remained in this place of confinement 
from January 26, 1685, to the 19th of December fol- 
lowing ; during which period the king, Charles the Se- 
cond, died, on a day when there were rejoicings in York 
for his supposed recovery. Mr. Heywood's manner of 
life in prison was this : — 

" (1.) After our rising, w T e kneeled down ; I went to 
prayer with my wife ; (2.) she in her closet, I in my 
chamber, went to secret prayer alone ; (3.) then I read 
a chapter in the Greek Testament, while I took a pipe ; 
(4.) then read a chapter in the Old Testament with 
Poole's Annotations ; (5.) then writ a little, here, or 
elsewhere ; (6.) at ten o'clock I read a chapter in Pro- 
verbs ; went to prayer with my wife, as family prayer ; 
(7.) then w T rit in some book or treatise I composed, till 
dinner ; (8.) after dinner, Mr. Whitaker and I read our 
turns for an hour in Fox's Acts and Monuments, last 
edition ; (9.) then went to my chamber ; if my wife was 
absent I spent an hour in secret prayer ; God helped 
usually ; (10.) after supper w T e read in Book of Martyrs ; 

* The words are these : " Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there 
is none upon earth that I desire beside thee ;" and surely no human 
being could ever make this appeal with more justice than Mr. Hey- 
wood. This would be felt by those who heard him. 



332 



THE LIFE OF 



study, go to prayer ; we read in Baxter's Paraphrase on 
the New Testament." Thus the two ministers lived like 
the martyrs in the Marian days, whose thoughts and 
sufferings were we see their daily theme, and with spirits, 
we cannot doubt, strung to the endurance of all which 
the martyrs suffered, had God called them to the last 
great conflict. 

There can seldom be much to relate of a prisoner, the 
monotony of whose life constitutes a chief part of its 
irksomeness. Day answereth to day with little by which 
one can be distinguished from another. Yet a few ex- 
tracts from the diary for this period may not be unac- 
ceptable : — 

February 5 : Heard of the dreadful tumult in the city 
about the king ; 6, great joy there was for the king's 
restoration ; 10, being at prayer pleading with my Lord, 
I was interrupted with the news of the king's death, and 
presently after King James the Second was proclaimed 
king in the city and castle ; 19, prevented from preach- 
ing by the gaoler. 

March 11, the assize week: "Went to the court, 
where I saw the Papists discharged upon entering re- 
cognizances, when the king called, to appear ; in after- 
noon attempts were made for me, truly in vain ; 13, my 
Lady Hewley visited me; I prayed with her; 14, my 
wife went to the funeral of old Mr. Coulton * ; 17, we 
presented our petition again to Judge Wright ; 23, all 
that forenoon we had abundance of visitors that came to 
the shout, which was about ten o'clock in the forenoon, 
for Clifford and king ; there was a great appearance ; 
24, Mr. Frankland came to visit me ; 26, I wrote in a 
paper my sermon on Zech. ix, 11; sent it home to my 
people." 

April 7, " I had the tidings that an Act of Grace was 
under the broad seal ; 8, I writ a letter to my people ; 

* Probably father of Dr. Colton, the minister of the York Non- 
Conformists in the latter days of Lady Hewley, and her principal 
adviser and friend. 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



333 



30, Sir W. [William] A. [Ascough], his lady, Mr. H., 
and others, visited us." 

May 2 " was a day of great affection, prayers, tears, 
groans, and that because I had intelligence that nothing 
could be done at Sessions that week for my release." 

July 26, "It was a mad night for ringing, shooting, 
bonfires, &c, in the city, being thanksgiving for victory ; 
30, cousin Angier prayed with me." 

August 7, assize week : " My wife went to the judge 
and sheriff about my liberty ; they put it off to each 
other; 9, my wife went to the high-sheriff for me; I 
sent her forth with prayer ; when she was gone I fol- 
lowed her with prayer ; God much melted my heart ; 
was quieted, however things fell. She returned ; nothing 
was done ; I was satisfied ; prayed with Francis Thomp- 
son, a condemned person ; 14, talked with M. Taylor, 
that was to suffer, but had little satisfaction ; 27, T. W. 
came to me, who had been with the high-sheriff, but 
could do no good for my liberty ; he said the calendar 
was shut up." 

October 1, attending the funeral of Mr. Beresford, 
that kept the cellars ; 29, finished my book of ' God's 
Title to Saints'." This does not appear to have been 
printed. 

December 19, " After dinner, while I was preparing 
to go to prayer alone, my wife being gone out, comes 
my liberation from Mr. Askil to Mr. Ash, our new 
gaoler, who set us at liberty. I and my wife walked 
out that night to Sir John Hewley's ; returned, and 
lodged in the castle." 

The day after his release, which was Sunday, he spent 
at Sir John Hewley's, where he preached in the family in 
the forenoon and after. He slept again that night at 
the castle, and the next day dined at Sir John Hewley's, 
and took his final leave of the castle of York. 

There were other Non-Conformists prisoners at York ; 
for on the Thursday he went to visit Mr. Ward and Mr. 
Taylor, who were prisoners, not in the castle, but in 



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Ouse-bridge gaol # . He dined that day with Lady Hewet. 
" Wednesday, went to Sir John Hewley with my wife. 
We spent the day in prayer and praise : Mr. Hodgson 
began ; Mr. Wardf , my son Eliezer, then I, discoursed 
extempore on Psalm cxvi, 12, ' What shall I render unto 
the Lord for all his benefits towards me ? ' We went to 
Mr. Hotham'st, lodged at Mr. Geldart's. On Thurs- 
day called on Mrs. Rhodes, Mrs. Todd, Mr. Reinar ; 
dined at Sir W. Ayscough's ; discoursed with his daugh- 
ter ; called at Mr. Rokeby's ; went to Mr. Ward at the 
bridge ; went to prayer with him. Friday, went to the 
castle, visited Mr. Whitaker. Returned to dine with 
Lawyer Rokeby§; went to visit Dr. Nicholson, Mrs. 
Cotes, Mrs. Blith ; took leave of Lady Hewley ; supped 
with Mr. Priestley." On Saturday he went to Mr. Hut- 
ton's at Poppleton, where, on the Sunday, there was a 
service in the house, when Mr. Todd preached, and 
they afterwards went to church. At the earnest entreaty 
of Mr. Hutton he stayed there on Monday to spend a 
day in prayer on account of his daughter, then going to 
be married to Mr. Earnshaw of York. "We gratified 
him ; began at nine ; Mr. Todd prayed ; then Mr. Burd- 
sal, their chaplain ; then I spoke something extempore 
from Prov. hi, 6, and prayed ; God helped ; we had no 
disturbance." He did not return to York, but passed 

* These were Mr. Ralph Ward, the ejected minister, of whom 
Dr. Calamy gives a long account (Account, &c, p. 509), and Mr. 
Andrew Taylor, before mentioned, " that public-spirited merchant," 
says Calamy, " who opened his door for private meetings in the 
straitest times." Mr. Ward's daughter was the first wife of Dr. Col- 
ton, the Presbyterian minister at the chapel in Saint Saviour Gate. 

f Not Ralph Ward, who was, as we have seen, in prison, but an- 
other Non- Conforming minister of that surname, Noah Ward, who 
resided at one of the Askham's-villages near York. There is a long 
notice of him in Calamy (Account, &c, p. 835). 

J This was Martin Hotham, a York merchant, who brought up 
one of his sons to the Presbyterian ministry, who was for fifty years 
and more one of the ministers of the chapel in Saint Saviour Gate. 

§ Afterwards Sir Thomas Rokeby, the judge, the principal law- 
adviser of Lady Hewley. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



335 



through Acombe and Askham to Tadcaster, and from 
thence to Leeds, where he lodged at Mr. Robert Led- 
yard's. He arrived at home on the 30th at five o'clock, 
where he found company, amongst whom he went to 
prayer, thanking God for his mercy so far in letting him 
see his own house. 

1686. 

Early in this year he again visited his friends in the 
neighbourhood of Huddersfield and Peniston, and also 
Mr. Westby and the two Gills at Car-house and The 
Oaks in Norton. He was also on this journey at 
Laughton, Walling- wells, Langold the seat of Sir Ralph 
Knight, and Great Houghton. On his return he visited 
his friends in the neighbourhood of Wakefield, Mr. Kirk, 
Mr. Nailor, Mr. Oates, and Mr. Holdsworth. 

In March he went to York on the business of his 
fine, when he lodged at the house of Sir John Hewley. 
4 'Wednesday morning, after Mr. Hodgson and I had 
performed our chamber-exercise and family duties in my 
lady's chamber, we went to Mr. Hart's coffee-house on 
Ouse-bridge to meet John Kirk, who gave an account 
that he had been with Mr. Ash, who stood on my fine 
of fifty pounds being paid." He remained several days 
at York, and went from thence to the Huttons at Pop- 
ple ton. On his return he met at Tadcaster Mr. Wilson 
of Leeds, who carried him to his house, where Thoresby, 
who was brother-in-law to Mr. Wilson, joined him. 
He wished to have visited others of his friends, ' ' but 
could not for being seen in that severe town." 

In April he visited his friends in Lancashire. Most 
of these visits I have left unnoticed ; by that means 
many names are omitted of persons who bore a large 
share of the hardships of the time, and were assistant 
in laying the foundations of the numerous Presbyterian 
societies which arose around Manchester and Bolton. 
According to what is the present taste of the public, 
which turns too much from minute and exact detail, I 



336 



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feel that I shall incur censure, not so much for having 
omitted as for having introduced so many names ; men, 
it is confessed, of whom little that is of prominent or 
general interest can be told, but still men who are looked 
back upon by many with respect, and who when more 
time-honoured than yet they are will find some one who 
will be glad to gather up what respecting them I have left 
untold. But as we are about to lose the benefit of Mr. 
Heywood's diary for nine years to come, T shall venture 
to give the particulars of this visit as he has recorded 
them, in which are several names of the fathers of South 
Lancashire Dissent not before introduced to the reader. 

April 14, to Rochdale; lodged at widow Scoles' ; 
prayed with Roger Pendlebury, very weak in a dropsy ; 
and again on the 15th, when he died while Mr. Heywood 
was praying with him. Dined at R. Milnes' with Mr. 
Leaver, and then to Manchester : called at Mr. S. Gas- 
kil's ; lodged at brother Hul ton's ; visited aunt Russel 
and Mr. Finch ; preached at Mr. Barlow's to a few ; 
called on Mr. Lister ; rode to Duckenfield ; called on 
Sir Robert Duckenfield, thence to cousin Angier's, and 
preached at Duckenfield on the Sunday ; visited Mrs. 
Hyde, when " I was helped in prayer with that afflicted 
gentlewoman ; thence to Mr. Hyde's of Denton and Sir 
Robert Duckenfield's ; Mr. Bagot, the chaplain, went 
to prayer betimes in the family with the servants ; before 
dinner in the dining-room he read a chapter, expounded, 
went to prayer again, and neither morning nor evening 
asked or suffered me to go to prayer with the family ; 
we dined ; after dinner rode to Manchester." There he 
visited his cousins, Eaton and Marler, Mr. Newcome, 
and preached at Mr. Gathorne's ; dined at Mr. Hooper's. 
Thence, on his way to Bolton, he lodged at his brother 
Colborne's at Radcliffe-b ridge, and at his sister Esther 
Whitehead's at Little Lever. From Bolton he travelled 
over the Moors to Mr. Mort's beyond Street-gate, and 
preached there. Returned to Bolton, visited his cousin 
Crompton ; attended an early meeting at cousin John 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



337 



Scolcroft's. Went to Bury, where he dined at Mr. Sa- 
muel Waring's ; thence to Mr. Hallo wes' near Roch- 
dale. 

So also of a visit in Craven : — 

June 2, in Craven: " Dined at Thornton with Mr. 
Hough : thence to Marton Scar ; visited Martha Mit- 
chel : thence to Swindon ; there met Mrs. Lambert, 
newly come from London ; stayed awhile ; rode with 
the coach that she was in to Calton, her house. She 
sent for neighbours. I preached on Mark x. 21 ; God 
graciously helped : lodged there. Thursday, came by 
Skipton and Silsden ; dined at Thomas Leach's ; called 
at Bingley ; came to Joseph Lister's at Allerton • home." 

In July he was again at York on the business of his 
fine, when he paid thirty pounds as a composition. He 
borrowed the money of Mr. Jonathan Priestley ; but it 
appears by his own report that his friends did not suffer 
the year of his imprisonment to be one of pecuniary loss 
likewise. 

On this visit to York his time was passed with the 
same persons, but especially with Sir John Hewley, who 
was at his seat at Bell-hall : — " Discoursed with Sir John 
Hewley ; lodged there : Saturday, after dinner, Sir John, 
my lady, and I walked in the gardens ; my motion was 
to spend some time in prayer that afternoon ; my lady 
gladly accepted it, but Lord Howard's daughter came a 
visiting them, one Mr. Cayley, and others, so prevented 
us. I read that afternoon." On the next day he 
preached at the hall. 

The diary closes on July 31, 1686. At that time he 
was cautious of preaching at home to more than the law 
allowed, and usually attended Mr. Ellison at the chapel. 
It is resumed in March 1695, when the Non-Conformists 
were in a very different position. 



z 



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CHAPTER XV. 
1687—1689. 

THE CONDUCT OF THE PRESBYTERIAN MINISTERS IN THE PRECEDING 
STRUGGLE NOT SO MUCH ONE OF PRINCIPLE AS OF FEELING. GE- 
NERAL VIEW OF THE OBJECTS OF THE STRUGGLE. CLOSE OF IT. 

KING JAMES' DECLARATION OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. ANOTHER 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE DISPENSING POWER. OPPOSITION OF 

THE CHURCH. MR. HEYWOOD's REFLECTIONS AT THE CLOSE OF THE 

YEAR 1687. MEASURES PURSUED UNDER THE LIBERTY GRANTED 

BY KING JAMES' DECLARATION ; THREE ORDINATIONS ; FOUNDATION 
OF THE CHAPEL AT NO RT II O W RAM ; OF THE SCHOOL THERE. PUB- 
LISHES HIS BAPTISMAL BONDS. THE REVOLUTION. THE TOLERA- 
TION ACT. THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION. PROCEEDINGS UNDER 

IT OF THE NON-CONFORMISTS. ANOTHER ORDINATION. MR. CAR- 

RINGTON. 

Thus were five-and-twenty years of Mr. Hey wood's life 
spent in an incessant struggle, and, as it appears, with- 
out any really great principle, or any very well-defined 
and important object in view. 

The design of the Presbyterian ministers at first ap- 
pears to have been to force the legislature to a conde- 
scension to their scruples and desires, and when this was 
nearly hopeless, to maintain their right, as a point of 
duty, to continue in the exercise of their ministry, though 
the law prohibited them from doing so. But of the great 
principles on which men's opinions in ecclesiastics are 
divided, and in which an entire agreement can never be 
hoped, we see but little in the contest between the Pres- 
byterian party and the state. Thus, whether there shall 
be a National Church, or the whole of what concerns 
religious ministrations shall be left to the people an open 



0LTV1CR HEYWOOD. 339 

question, every one doing what seems right in his own 
eyes, and laying hold of as much as he can gain of the 
funds which the piety of our remote ancestors has pro- 
vided for the maintenance of Christianity among us, and 
the acceptable performance of the Christian ordinances 
— this is indeed an important question ; but it was no 
question between the Presbyterian ministers and the 
state, both being agreed on the importance and neces- 
sity of a national union in affairs connected with religion. 
Whether the Church shall be in the Episcopal or the 
Presbyterian order is of great importance to those who 
look upon episcopacy as of divine appointment, and are 
persuaded that there can be no true Church of Christ 
without it ; but to a person like Mr. Heywood, who 
did not hold this opinion, or contend that there could 
be no true church but the Presbyterian, but only that 
the Presbyterian form was the more excellent form, 
and had the support to be derived from the practice of 
primitive times and the opinions of some of the most 
eminent of the reformers, it was a question of but infe- 
rior importance, in which a man might safely surrender 
his own judgment to the judgment of the majority, or 
at least feel that he was not called on to insist upon his 
own views on such a subject being enforced on the great 
majority of the people with whom he was united. The 
faith professed in the Church is also a point of great 
importance ; but in this there was not the slightest shade 
of difference between Mr. Heywood and the Church, 
beyond that difference which there has always been and 
always will be in the most sincere members of the Church 
respecting the interpretation of one or more of the arti- 
cles, and the precise effect of certain expressions in the 
creeds and formularies. The question of subscription 
to certain prescribed Articles of Belief from persons who 
are candidates for the ministry, came in a very short time 
to be one of great moment in the Non-Conforming con- 
troversy ; but it was no question with Mr. Heywood, who 

z 2 



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himself prepared articles of faith for his church, and took 
confessions of faith from the young ministers whom he 
ordained, and who would have not the slightest objection 
to subscription as subscription, or to subscription to the 
Articles in the main. If the Presbyterians at this time 
opened the way to the progress of Christian truth and the 
advance of theological science, that was rather the acci- 
dental consequence of their conduct than any object which 
they had in their contemplation ; and the mass of them 
of the age of Mr. Hey wood would probably have shrunk 
back in alarm from the thought that they were but pre- 
paring the way for the open promulgation of opinions 
very different from those which they had themselves re- 
ceived. In the mode in which the Christian ordinances 
were to be administered, there is nothing which rises to 
the dignity of a principle in the objections which were 
made, some of which appear mere cavils, some mere 
ignorances of the design and purport of them, and none 
which were at all worthy to enter into a wise man's cal- 
culation when he was meditating on any question so im- 
portant as whether he shall oppose himself to national 
union in a case in which union and peace are so much 
to be desired, and whether he shall in his conduct set 
the example of perpetual violation of public law. The 
question of a liturgical form in public worship, or the 
use of free prayer, is one in which it can hardly be said 
that any great principle is involved ; it is rather a ques- 
tion of taste and feeling : some minds will be found who 
prefer the one, and others will be more edified by the 
other ; but it was no matter to found an opposition to 
a national union upon, for take whichever side we may, 
were the nation polled, there would be found an im- 
mense minority, who, if there is to be a church at all, 
must in this point not follow their own inclinations, 
but succumb to the determination of other minds. The 
special objections taken by them to certain things in the 
Liturgy of the English Church are but of the same character 



OLIVER HEYVV00D. 



341 



(with hardly an exception # ) with the objections to forms, 
offices, vestments, and gesture, and were certainly unwor- 
thy to be made the ground of such an opposition as was 
made to them, especially when the reasonable admission 
is made, that objections quite as strong might easily be 
taken to expressions in the extemporaneous addresses of 
the Puritan ministry, and that there can be nothing in 
this world, of immaculate purity and absolute per- 
fection. 

In the question of the king's supremacy in the English 
Church, it does not appear that there were at that time 
scruples in the minds of the Presbyterians, whatever might 
be the case with the Independents, who were opposed to 
the monarchical principle both in ecclesiastics and poli- 
tics. And in all the questions of revenue which have of 
late years so much distracted the Church, Mr. Heywood 
would have had no reduction of the amount of the in- 

* I cannot enter here into the detail of this argument, but I shall 
briefly notice two of the most prominent of the objections taken to 
expressions in the public Liturgy by the Puritans, and which have 
continued to be stumbling-blocks among their descendants. In the 
marriage service, — " With all my worldly goods I thee endow." 
What ! go and profess at the altar in the most solemn manner, that 
you endow the woman with your whole worldly estate, when you 
know that you have made settlements of it the day before which nul- 
lify this dotation ? This arises entirely from a misunderstanding of 
the true nature of the transaction. The previous settlements took 
out of the hands of the husband certain portions of his property. 
They might be wisely framed, or the contrary ; but in all probability 
the act was reasonable, proper, and just. The property thus as- 
signed was, however, no longer his when he appeared at the altar, 
and what he then endows the wife with is that which remained his ; 
and in this the Liturgy wisely requires him to give, in the most so- 
lemn manner, an absolute participation to her whom he takes in this 
indissoluble union. In the burial service, — "As our hope is this our 
brother does." What ! say this over the most abandoned profligate, 
who has lived the enemy of his family and the world ? A funeral is 
not a time to dwell upon the faults of the silent child of humanity 
whose dust and ashes are before us ; and to my mind, to take this 
out of the service would be to deprive it of one of its most touching 
and sublime expressions, one also that is full of the spirit of Christian 
charity, and of confidence in the eternal mercies of God. 



342 



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come which is provided for the support of those who 
minister in sacred things, or the way in which it arises, 
in which he would recognise an adherence to Scripture, 
though he might have objected to the too unequal dis- 
tribution of it. With respect to the mode in which the 
appointment of ministers should be made, I have not 
observed anything very decisive as to his opinion on that 
point ; but he would probably incline to what was soon 
afterwards the general feeling of the Non-Conformist 
body, that the people to whom he was to minister should 
elect the person who ministered, regard being had to his 
having previously received ordination at the hands of a 
body of presbyters ; but this was never made any point 
of principle by the elder ministers, few of whom had held 
their benefices by the election of the people. 

We shall shortly have to speak of the conduct of the 
Church in respect of the great political question of the 
seventeenth century, the just limits of the royal preroga- 
tive. We have seen the Non-Conforming clergy refu- 
sing an oath which admitted too much ; here, it may be 
said, was a great political principle : but then we have 
also seen that they allowed of the dispensing power, and 
we shall immediately see that they acknowledged that 
power on a more serious occasion, when the Church 
stood manfully against it, and gained the honour of 
having saved the country at once from the establishment 
of that principle, and probably from the introduction of 
popery. So that even here there was at least a vacilla- 
tion in their political conduct, which detracts from the 
respect which is paid to men who stand forward in a 
consistent opposition to that which endangers the liber- 
ties and the best interests of their country. 

In the ground of Presbyterian dissent at the begin- 
ning there appears therefore to have been more of feel- 
ing than of principle, I mean what may be called of high 
general principle, applicable to their times and to the 
times of their successors, unless indeed we account their 
high deference to Scripture a principle, and the imprac- 



OLIVER HEYVVOOD. 



343 



ticable design of bringing everything in a Christian pro- 
fession to the exact measure of Scripture an object, a 
principle common to all the Protestant communities, and 
therefore not characteristic of any. A main point was 
the re-ordination, a mere temporary and transient affair, 
passing away with the generation of those who were 
ejected, had they not thought proper to introduce a se- 
cond race into the ministry by the same kind of ordi- 
nation. But this was rather feeling than principle, a 
something at least in which human considerations min- 
gled with those of a higher and purer quality, or at best 
a preference of one mode, between two, in which the 
advantage is not very apparent and decisive on either 
side. That there was throughout this long struggle a 
lingering hope, that by a steady perseverance they should 
at length succeed in forcing themselves back into the 
Church on their own terms, or on something near them, 
can hardly be doubted ; and there was throughout the 
struggle in very strong operation, that feeling which al- 
ways arises in the mind of the oppressed when they are 
conscious to rectitude of intention and propriety of ac- 
tion, but which rises the highest when a man appears to 
himself and to his friends to be a sufferer for conscience 
sake, to be brought to bonds and imprisonment because 
he feels it his duty to pursue a certain course in obe- 
dience to what appears to him to be the command of a 
power who has an unlimited right to his entire obedience, 
and acts according to his high conviction. 

Whether their zealous preaching when the law pro- 
hibited it is to be regarded as the result of principle or 
of feeling, may admit of a question. If they had ac- 
cepted the terms proposed in the Act of Uniformity , they 
might still have preached as energetically and as effi- 
ciently as they did when they had refused those terms. 
Perhaps a sober judgment would say, that such restraints 
as that law laid upon ministers were on the whole fa- 
vourable ; for it can hardly be that Christianity requires, 
for the prevalence of its holy influences, that there shall 



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be such incessant ministrations and such lengthened 
services. We must admire the zeal and energy of Mr. 
Heywood, and it becomes the more admirable when, in 
the secret memorials of what passed in his own mind, 
we see that he was acting throughout with a constant 
reference to Him who looketh on the heart, and doing 
what he did on a high sense and feeling of duty. Va 
mihi, si non prcsdicavero ! This, as I have already said, 
was in this point his guiding star. But this is feeling, 
not principle. 

He held, however, that such a ministry as his was 
eminently needed in those particular times. His per- 
suasion of the inadequacy of the ministry provided by 
the Church in the ordinary parish order, to restrain the 
flood of immorality which set in at the Restoration, 
shows itself not unfrequently, from which the inference 
is direct to the necessity of a ministry irregular but 
faithful, unrestrained by any foreign power, and directed 
by the solitary determination of men in earnest in com- 
bating with sin. We are not perhaps in a condition to 
estimate with precision the validity of this consideration. 
Nothing is more difficult than to estimate, with any de- 
gree of exactness, the actual amount of religious princi- 
ple and virtuous action in large bodies of men, and to 
compare in this respect the men of one period of time 
with those of another. But it can hardly be doubted that 
the reign of King Charles the Second was a period in 
which there was a great debasement of the public mo- 
rals. The state of the court is matter of history ; but 
history seems not to have delivered down to us an exact 
relation of what was the conduct of the divines about 
the court, whether they spoke faithfully, as became 
them, or no. And an unfaithful ministry is surely a 
greater evil in a country than any excesses with which 
the Puritan ministers may be charged in the length, the 
frequency, or the solemnity of their addresses. 

At any rate, it cannot be denied that they found a 
craving in the minds of many of their countrymen, and 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



345 



those of the most sober and religious character, for a 
more exciting ministry than that which the Church at 
that period supplied. 

The evil, natural and moral, which was occasioned by 
this protracted conflict, is a subject of unmixed grief, 
whether it is referred to too great pertinacity on the part 
of the ministers who were ejected, or to an unreasonable 
and unjust attempt to force compliance on the part of the 
authorities of the time ; and greatly is it to be regretted 
that some wise man had not arisen who had sagacity to 
discern the means by which opposing principles could 
be reconciled, and influence sufficient to induce compli- 
ance. With respect to the Presbyterians, there was so 
much in common with the Church, that it seems as if it 
might have been accomplished, the Church making a 
temporary sacrifice to the position in which the mini- 
sters ordained between 1645 and 1660 were placed, on 
whose deaths much of the difficulty surrounding the 
question would have passed away. But the excitement 
of the preceding period would not have subsided, leaving 
the Church entire ; for if the Presbyterians were recon- 
ciled, there were still the Independents, and the Quakers, 
and the Anabaptists, beside a few very small sects, who 
would still have remained as separate communities ; and 
this it was which probably made the politicians of the 
time less solicitous about the comprehension of the Pres- 
byterians. 

We should, however, mistake if we were to suppose 
that such a life as that which we have seen Mr. Hey wood 
to have led was necessarily an unhappy one. Whether 
he took a just view of what was required of him, or was 
in this mistaken, he had the satisfactions which always 
belong to those who are conscious that they have done 
their duty, when the call is to the sacrifice of something 
which is valuable. He had also the satisfaction of finding 
himself respected and honoured by many whose opinion 
he greatly valued, and he had the sweeter satisfaction of 
that cordiality of affection which is seldom purer or 



346 



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more delightful than when it springs out of community 
of religious sentiment or a sense of common suffering 
for a common cause. He had also the satisfaction of 
finding his public services most acceptable to the people 
wherever he laboured, and occasionally of receiving 
cheering proofs of the success of his labours. I do not 
find that he had any misgivings respecting the course 
which he had taken, or any doubts of any kind that per- 
plexed him, save that humble estimate of his own self, 
which was a part of his character from the time when 
it first began to be developed and continued to the last, 
and that deep anxiety, so amiable when sincere, " lest, 
when having preached to others, he himself should be a 
castaway." In respect of his own public conduct, in re- 
spect of his faith in Christ and trust in God, he had no 
uncertainty,, and in what was most peculiar in the course 
he took, he felt that he had the support which the ex- 
ample of many wise and virtuous men gave who made 
similar sacrifices, and offered a like resistance against 
unchristian laws. 

I proceed, however, with more satisfaction in thus 
detailing the events of Mr. Heywood's life, and the 
changing policy of the state by which he was affected, 
now we are arrived at the period when the struggle is 
over, when terms of peace are settled, and an entirely 
new order of things is introduced. First, an indirect 
policy of King James the Second gave the ministers the 
liberty they desired ; and next, it was fully assured to 
them by one of the first acts of the legislature when 
King James had been driven from his throne, and the 
crown was transferred to King William and Queen Mary. 

That King James had no particular regard for Pro- 
testant Non-Conformity will easily be believed ; that his 
purpose was to reunite the English Church to the Ro- 
man Catholic Church is hardly to be questioned ; and 
that he expected to combat the opposition which the 
Church would make to his design, by giving to the Non- 
Conformists a common interest with the Papists, seems 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



347 



sufficiently probable. But whatever might be his object, 
he adopted a measure in the year 1687, which gave greater 
liberty to the Non-Conformists than had been given by 
the Indulgence of 1672, and even greater liberty than 
was secured to them by law in the succeeding reign. To 
this he knew that he should never obtain the consent of 
Parliament : he had therefore recourse to the dispensing 
power, as his brother had before him. But he proceeded 
with more deference to law, for he submitted the ques- 
tion of his right to dispense with the penal laws against 
persons not members of the Church to the judges, ten 
of whom decided that he possessed it. On this he sig- 
nified to the Council, 4 'That although there had been 
many endeavours made to establish a uniformity of reli- 
gious worship in the reigns of four of his predecessors, 
yet they had all proved ineffectual ; that the restraint 
upon the conscience of Dissenters had been very preju- 
dicial, as was fully experienced in the rebellion against 
his royal father ; that the penal laws made against them, 
especially those in the reign of his predecessor, had 
tended rather to increase than to diminish the number 
of them ; and that nothing could more conduce to the 
peace and quiet of the kingdom, and an increase of the 
number as well as trade of his subjects, than an entire 
liberty of conscience." On the foundation of these prin- 
ciples he issued a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience 
on the. 4th of April, 1687, allowing the most unlimited 
right of public worship, and ordered the Attorney and So- 
licitor General not to permit any process to issue against 
any Dissenters whatever for acts of Non-Conformity. 

This was received by the Dissenters with abundant 
satisfaction. Addresses flowed in from every part of the 
kingdom, in which they expressed their thankfulness for 
the liberty granted them. They thus acknowledged the 
dispensing power again, which was, in fact, an acknow- 
ledgement of a power little less than arbitrary ; they also 
endangered at least the interests of Protestantism out of 
regard to securing their own liberty. Not but that there 



348 



THE LIFE OF 



was in reality the same aversion from Popery and from 
arbitrary power as had existed in their fathers, and their 
addresses were cautiously worded accordingly, and their 
co-operation in the measures which removed the king 
from the throne was as zealous as that of any party. 
In considering their conduct at this juncture, great al- 
lowance ought also to be made for the peculiarity of 
their situation. They deemed the liberty the Declaration 
gave them their undoubted right, and it was not to be 
expected that they would scan too scrupulously the 
means by which it was given them, with no suggestion 
or solicitation of their own. The king could not mistake 
their addresses, which pledged them to nothing more 
than the peaceable use of the liberty he had been pleased 
to grant. But still it cannot be denied that they counte- 
nanced the sovereign in this most dangerous stretch of 
power. 

The king committed, what for himself was a fatal 
error, in departing in one point from the precedent of 
1672. The Declaration of that year was published in 
the usual form, but King James required the concur- 
rence of the Church. He commanded that his Declara- 
tion should be read in all the churches and chapels of 
the realm. This must have been either in ostentation 
of power, or with the design of humiliating the Church. 
There were many churchmen who had preached the 
doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance in the 
preceding reign, who might, on their own principles, have 
been expected to comply ; but the fact was, that the 
Church, with an almost unanimous consent, refused to 
read the Declaration, and seven of the bishops presented 
a petition, in person, to the king, praying that they and 
their clergy might be excused from reading it, and making 
in their petition the honest and memorable statement, 
that the dispensing power had often been declared to be 
illegal in Parliament. This petition was charged as li- 
bellous ; but a jury, on their trial, acquitted them. The 
king was intending to proceed against some of the inferior 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



349 



clergy for their disobedience, but it was soon evident that 
the Prince of Orange was meditating a descent, and the 
Church, united by this common opposition (with a few 
exceptions), gave him welcome. 

Then it was that the Church appeared as it had done 
in earlier times, a safety and bulwark to the nation in 
respect of its political freedom ; and the Non-Con- 
formists must have felt that the chief glory of the victory 
which liberal principles then obtained was the due of the 
Church which they had abandoned, and that they were 
rather the auxiliaries than the principals. 

Mr. Heywood's reflections at the close of the year let 
us into the views of a minister living far from the court, 
and intent on the duties of his calling, respecting the 
Declaration : — 

" January 13, 1687-8, having been abroad three days 
preceding in preaching-work, I fell to review the passages 
of the preceding year, and do find they all do lay a further 
and stronger obligation upon me to be the Lord's : — 
(1.) This may be called annus mirabilis, the wonderful 
year, and from this time it may be said, What hath God 
wrought, principally in the liberty of the Gospel in these 
three nations ? All persons expected a greater restraint 
than formerly, and there was great cause to expect a 
sudden desolation or violent persecution from the popish 
party, that had long waited for and now at last obtained 
a prince of their own religion. But behold the contrary. 
There comes forth the king's Declaration for Liberty of 
Conscience, dated the 4th April 1687, wherein he de- 
clares a suspension of all penal laws in matters eccle- 
siastical, and free liberty to Dissenters to preach ; where- 
upon ministers and people did generally accept this 
liberty, addressed the king with gratitude, entered into 
their meeting-places, preached the Gospel freely, had 
numerous assemblies, which liberty hath continued this 
year out. We have Sacraments, solemn ordination of 
ministers, conferences, and exercises set up on week- 
days, discipline, and no disturbance in any thing. O 



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what a change ! Surely somebody hath laid hard siege 
at the throne of grace ; and I can truly say, without va- 
nity, in this hath my dear Lord graciously answered my 
importunate prayers, and given me, in particular, a 
token for good. (2.) Though withal popish meeting- 
places have been set up in many parts of the kingdom, 
and at first some for novelty did frequent them, yet 
few, yea very few, anywhere have turned to them, but 
some, I hear, have turned off from them since they 
opened their fopperies more freely ; on the other hand, 
godly Dissenters have gained ground and grown more 
numerous than ever ; so that at Chipping, Wyresdale, 
Poulton, &c. in Lancashire, meetings are set up where 
never were any before, even in popish places, as T have 
been informed this week, so that Papists and Quakers 
complain nobody is a gainer by this liberty but Presby- 
terians ; blessed be God! (3.) God hath raised up a 
great number of young ministers ; I have had a hand in 
setting apart five very hopeful young men this last year, 
and six were set apart publicly amongst a great assembly 
at the meeting-place at W., and others elsewhere, besides 
several young candidates that began to preach this year 
and are in full employment, that wait for an opportunity 
to be set apart regularly for God's work ; Aaron's rod 
hath budded blossoms and almonds ; blessed be God, 
this also is an answer of prayer. (4.) There hath been 
an attempt made this year to try who would give con- 
sent for taking off tests and penal laws ; nobility and 
commons have generally declared themselves in a nega- 
tive, from an universal jealousy that that 's a step to 
Popery, against which there is a strange antipathy among 
country people ; yea, the High Church of England men 
say the Dissenters must either stick to them in this or 
they are undone ; yea, 't is verily thought this will be 
an occasion of greater union amongst both parties than 
hath been ; this is digitus Dei. (5.) In Scotland, that 
distrest peeled nation, there's a wonderful change of 
affairs; free liberty granted, meeting-places erected, manv 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



351 



built, banished ministers restored out of all parts of the 
world, meetings wonderfully frequented by persons of 
all ranks and degrees, so that I have heard of earls sitting 
in meetings among the common people, their classical 
and provincial meetings celebrated, frequented, so that 
it is like a new world both to them and us, whatever 
be the meaning of this providence ; and these things are 
the more strange, considering the severity still used 
against the Protestants in France : it is said 1500 fled 
into England from thence this year." 

We must now resume our account of Mr. Heywood's 
proceedings ; and shall speak first of the ordination ser- 
vices to which he alludes. 

The first was to set apart Mr. Robert Chaderton, born 
near Middleton, and brought up for a little time at 
Brazen-nose College ; returned into Lancashire and was 
an assistant in a school at Middleton, but became a 
preacher, and was received as chaplain into the family 
of Mr. Serjeant of Stand in Pilkington, near Manchester, 
where he married the daughter of William Walker of that 
place. " This man," Mr. Heywood proceeds, " having 
preached much in many places up and down the country 
with multitudes flocking after him and great applause 
amongst the vulgar, and having been violently persecuted 
by the Spiritual Court, excommunicated, imprisoned at 
Lancaster, when he got his liberty,, still went on preaching 
abundantly, and it is verily thought by some Christians 
that he hath been an instrument of convincing and con- 
verting many souls ; this man hath laid wait for speak- 
ing to me when I came over into Lancashire, that I 
might be one to send him into the Lord's vineyard, be- 
cause, as he hath acknowledged, God made me an in- 
strument of doing his soul good when I preached at 
Underwood, near Rochdale, fourteen years ago." He 
applied to Mr. Heywood, and, after some consideration, 
it was settled that the ordination should take place at wi- 
dow Colbourn's house at Outwood-gate, near Stand, on 
the 12th of May. On that day Mr. Heywood, Mr. Pendle- 



352 



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bury and Mr. Robert Eaton met, two other ministers 
who were expected disappointing them. " Mr. Eaton 
began with prayer. I asked Mr. Chaderton whether he 
had a thesis ready to dispute upon ? He answered, he 
had not : he wanted time. I desired him to go to 
prayer, and then give us the heads of the last sermon he 
had preached, which he did ; I confined him to half an 
hour. He gave us an account of what he had preached 
on Lukexix. 44, ' Because thou knowest not the time of 
thy visitation :' it was a good profitable discourse. Then 
I asked him of his knowledge in the Hebrew, Greek ; to 
give me the Greek of his text ; he did so, but confessed 
his ignorance in Hebrew. I also examined him in logic, 
philosophy, but found him somewhat defective; in church- 
history, &c, wherein he had not been much conversant. I 
proceeded to the authors he had read in divinity, and then 
propounded a question in Latin about justification, An 
Fides sit conditio justificationis ? He held faith's instru- 
mentality to justification, which I opposed. Then in- 
quired his ends in undertaking the ministry, evidences 
of grace in his soul, continuance in the work of God all 
his days, &c, which he answered honestly. Then I put 
him on making a confession of his faith, which he did 
very methodically, distinctly and satisfactorily. Then he 
kneeled down before us, and I went to prayer over him, 
laying my hand on him, the other ministers standing by 
and joining in that work. Then Mr. Pendlebury gave 
the exhortation learnedly and accurately; (1.) showing 
the office of the ministry ; (2.) the manner how to dis- 
charge it ; (3.) the relation to the people : then went to 
prayer and pronounced a blessing, and so we finished 
that solemnity between four and five o'clock. Then we 
subscribed our hands to a certificate, that we knew he 
was set apart to the ministry according to scripture rule. 
There were present six or seven Christian friends. I 
could have desired more had been with us, but my bre- 
thren were not willing." 

Mr. Chaderton's race was soon run. In July he re- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



353 



moved to Lancaster, to be the settled minister of the 
Non -Conformists in that town. When he had been a 
month there he became ill ; was brought, with difficulty, 
to the Old Hall at Stand, where his wife was, on August 
30 ; there he languished for a few weeks, and then died. 
He was buried at Prestwich, October 15, 1687 ; there 
was great lamentation for him. Mr. Walker preached 
his funeral sermon. 

" The next business of that nature that we were con- 
cerned in was more solemn, and, to me, more satis- 
factory than any of the former. Mr. Frankland and I 
being together at Attercliffe (where he now lives) , April 
21, 1687, we appointed the time of our next meeting to 
be at my house, June 1 , to perform the like solemnity; and 
the persons to be ordained were, Mr. Matthew Smith, 
my son Eliezer, Mr. Edward Byrom, my cousin Samuel 
Angier, and cousin Nathaniel Heywood. In the mean 
time Mr. Frankland was to send to cousin Samuel An- 
gier and Mr. Byrom, and I was to send to the rest ; and 
we sent them theses to position and dispute upon, and 
gave them instructions to bring certificates and what 
else would be expected from them." A difficulty arose 
with respect to Mr. Smith, who preached to two con- 
gregations, the one at John Hanson's in Mixenden, 
where the people were exceedingly desirous that he 
should be ordained in the manner proposed ; but the 
people of the other congregation, at Mr. John Hall's at 
Kipping, near Thornton, who had been the first to give 
him a call into this country, being of the Congregational 
persuasion, put a stop to the proceeding; not that they 
were so much averse to its being done by the ministers, 
but they thought it ought to be in the midst of his own 
congregation. The issue was, that Mr. Smith's ordina- 
tion was postponed. 

On the first of June, the four other candidates ap- 
peared at Mr. Heywood's house at Northowram, and 
Mr. Frankland, Mr. Dawson, Mr. James Bradshaw, Mr. 

2 A 



354 



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John Heywood and Mr. Issot, who with Mr. Heywood 
were to perform the work. Mr. Sharp, who was expected, 
disappointed them. Mr. Frankland began with prayer ; 
the candidates were then required to read part of the first 
Psalm, and turn it into Latin, which they did ; then the 
same with a portion of the Greek Testament ; they were 
then examined in logic, philosophy, chronology, and 
what authors they had read in divinity. Mr. Frank- 
land required them to give some account of the grace of 
God in them, and their aims and grounds which moved 
them to enter into that sacred office. In answer to these 
inquiries they all spoke very seriously and humbly, and 
gave great satisfaction. Their theses were then read, in 
which Mr. Byrom run out to great length on the doc- 
trine of purgatory, as he did also in his confession of 
faith, in which he entered into many controversies. Mr. 
Heywood thought him long ; but Mr. Frankland ex- 
pressed his satisfaction that God had raised up young 
men to be so well armed against Arminians, Socinians, 
and others. They were then examined on their inten- 
tions of constancy, of maintaining discipline, concord in 
the church, care of their families, and the like. The 
ministers then proceeded to the imposition of hands : 
" My son, being their senior, was first called forth, and, 
kneeling down on a cushion in the middle of my meet- 
ing-house floor, I first went to prayer over him, and 
once more (as I had done many a time) gave him up to 
the Lord in that sacred office. God did greatly melt my 
heart in that duty." The last on whom hands were laid 
was Nathaniel Heywood. Mr. James Bradshaw prayed 
over him tc with some more than ordinary concernedness, 
reflecting on his dear father, my gracious and loving 
brother." When they were risen up, ( ' I delivered to 
them all particularly the Holy Bible, intimating thereby 
their receiving commission and authority from Christ to 
expound and apply the Scriptures, &c; and Mr. Frank- 
land thought fit we should take them by the hand and 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



355 



express our willingness thereby to give them the right 
hand of fellowship # ." The exhortation was delivered 
by Mr. Heywood, who founded it on Numbers xvii. 10, 
the favourite text on such occasions, " Aaron's rod bud- 
ding, blossoming, and yielding almonds," but which was 
peculiarly appropriate on this occasion, when of the four 
persons admitted to the ministry, one was his own son, 
another his brother's son, and a third of the family 
of his father-in-law, John Angier. They then went to 
prayer ; the 1 32nd Psalm was sung, and then the blessing. 
A certificate was given them, Several candidates for the 
ministry and other persons were present. 

Mr. Smith was ordained alone, on the 19th of August, 
by Mr. Heywood, Mr. Dawson, and Mr. Waddington ; 
the place, John Bury's, Shuckden-head, near Thornton, 
and not either of the places at which he was the mini- 
ster ; but a place equally distant from both. The service 
was conducted in the same manner as the preceding, in- 
cluding the imposition of hands, the delivery of the 
Bible and the giving the right hand of fellowship. Mr. 
Smith presented among his testimonials his diploma of 
M.A. from the University of Edinburgh. He was a 
native of York, and had been brought up for the most 
part by Mr. Ralph Ward, the ejected minister. He was 
afterwards, as we shall see, the first minister who intro- 

* This clause is remarkable, as showing that typical actions were 
in use among them, though it seems to have been a principle of the 
Puritans to account typical actions superstitious ; for what are cere- 
monies — what, for instance, the sign of the cross in baptism, 
which was one of the ceremonies against which the Presbyterians 
had a particular aversion — but a typical action ? and to the full as 
appropriate as the delivery of the Bible and the shaking of the hands. 
This giving the right hand of fellowship was long after practised at 
ordinations, by persons of Puritan descent, in America, and has lately 
been introduced again in such kind of services among the English 
Presbyterians, who seem to have entirely forgotten that it had ever 
been practised in the genuine ordinations by their forefathers, when 
they supposed themselves only imitating the Presbyterians of Ame- 
rica, in whom much of the feeling and principle of the earlier Puri- 
tans of England still remains. 

2 a 2 



356 



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duced opinions deemed heretical among the Non-Con- 
formists of this part of Yorkshire. 

Mr. Heywood notices that Mr. Sagar was ordained 
about this time in the parts of Lancashire about Black- 
burn. He was unable to attend at another ordination to 
which he was invited, which was held at Attercliffe, near 
Sheffield, on September 1 ] , 1688, when Mr. Frankland, 
Mr. Prime, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Timothy Jollie, and other 
ministers, set apart, with four others, Mr. Abraham 
Dawson (son to Mr. Dawson), Mr. Manlove, and Mr. 
Aldred, who were all ministers of note in the body # . 

In this year, 1687, Mr. Heywood published another 
of his practical works, entitled, ' Baptismal Bonds Re- 
newed.' 

It was during the state of liberty which the Dissenters 
enjoyed under King James's Declaration that Mr. Heywood 
built his chapel at Northowram. This shows at once his 
own impatience to make use of every opportunity, and 
the confidence which he felt in the stability of the liberty 
which the Declaration gave. Hitherto his congregation 
had met in a room of his own dwelling-house. It was in 
this room that the ordination had taken place, and it is 
of this room that mention is made when we have hitherto 
spoken of his meeting-house. But now he determined 
upon erecting a building expressly constructed for the 
purpose, and the site chosen was at a small distance 
from his dwelling, where his generous neighbour, Wil- 
liam Clay, gave a piece of land for the purpose, and also 
engaged to find all the stone that would be required. 
The people were backward in giving their assistance ; 
only a few of them constructed pews for themselves. 
The burthen fell chiefly on Mr. Heywood, who set peo- 

* Mr. Abraham Dawson was the minister at Stannington, near 
Sheffield, in the early period of his life, the greater part of which 
was passed as the minister at Cottingham, near Hull. The scenes of 
Mr. Manlove's labours were, Pontefract, Leeds and Newcastle, but 
he died early in life. Mr. Aldred was long the minister at Monton, 
near Manchester, where he was held in very high esteem. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



357 



pie to work to get the stone on January 25, 1687-88, 
and the work proceeded so rapidly that it was finished 
by July, and on the 8th of that month Mr. Heyw T ood 
preached in it the first sermon. At the end of the year 
he writes thus : — " I have had twenty-eight Lord's days 
comfortably in it ; numerous assemblies ; great privi- 
leges : blessed be God ! I laid out almost sixty pounds 
upon it, and do not repent, however things go for the 
future. I must say, as David, ' Who am I, that I should 
be able to offer so willingly after this sort In another 
place he says that William Clay assured the land to him 
and his ; it was a corner of a field belonging to him, 
by Well-Butts ; that his cousin Hilton gave him ten 
pounds towards the work, other friends ten pounds more. 
His w T ife was the supervisor. He did not " mark the 
marble with his name," but he placed over the door a 
cypher in which were the letters O. and H., with the 
date, 1688, rather tastefully combined, and in such a 
manner that persons might frequently gaze upon the 
cypher, without perceiving that it had any relation to 
the name of the founder # . 

And here, though it is a little in anticipation as to the 
order of time, may be mentioned that Mr. Heywood did 
another good public service for the people of North- 
owram. His own account of it is this : — " Another 
contrivance I had in my heart, which was to build a 
school. Mr. Joseph Hall, who owneth Northowram- 
Green, w T as willing to give me ground of ten yards 
square. We set it out. He gave me stone for getting, 
in Roger Stock's delph. William Clay, Robert Ramsden 
of Quarles, Jeremiah Baxter, junior, and I undertook it. 

* Thoresby, in his Diary (8vo, i. p. 256), relates a pleasing anec- 
dote of this dissenting chapel: — " 1694, April 13: Rode to Mr. 
Priestley's, and in return to Mr. Heywood's at Northowram ; was 
pleased with the chapel himself lately built there for his people ; into 
which, he told me, the late Vicar of Halifax, my good friend Mr. 
Hough [successor to Dr. Hooke, who died in 1689], entering with 
him, put off his hat, and, with fervency, uttered these words : ' The 
good Lord bless the word preached in this place.' " 



358 



THE LIFE OF 



I gave five pounds at first, promised other seven pounds, 
for building it ; we are not yet certain what it lies in, 
but it is finished ; and Mr. David Hartley, born in Hali- 
fax, an Oxford scholar in Lincoln College, came to 
teach school October 5, 1693. On the 7th of December 
he had fifteen scholars ; he was industrious ; on the 
30th of January he had 27." Mr. Hey wood prevailed 
upon Lord Wharton to maintain six poor scholars at 
this school, allowing twenty shillings each per year, of 
which sixteen went to the master, and " the other four 
were reserved by Mr. Heywood to buy books. Mr. Hart- 
ley, the first master, was the father of a celebrated son, 
Dr. David Hartley, a physician, author of the work en- 
titled 6 Observations on Man/ 

Little remains in Mr. Heywood's papers to show how 
he felt and what he thought in respect of the great 
political movement which now immediately ensued and 
placed King William on the throne of England, and that 
little is in no respect remarkable. His mind was fixed on 
one point, the liberty of preaching, and it was indifferent 
to him whether this liberty came by a royal Declaration 
or by an Act declaratory of the national will ; and he 
would rejoice in that great measure, which was one of 
the first of the new reign, chiefly as it would enhance 
the sense of security in respect of the permanence of the 
liberty which the Declaration gave him. He looked only 
to the immediate benefit ; nor does it appear to have 
entered his mind, that while the Act of Toleration se- 
cured to him and his brethren the liberty which they 
coveted of preaching, it extinguished their chance of re- 
incorporation with the Church, and fixed them for ever 
in the rank of sectaries, to stand side by side with the 
Independents, the Anabaptists and the Quakers, men to 
whose distinguishing principles, if to nothing else, the 
Presbyterians had a strong, and not very unreasonable 
aversion. 

The Act of Toleration ' Primo Gulielmi et Marise,' 
cap. 18, which is regarded as the great charter of the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



359 



liberties of the Non-Conformists, is entitled, ' An Act 
for exempting their Majesties' Protestant subjects dis- 
senting from the Church of England from the penalties 
of certain Laws.'— It declares that the Statutes of 23 
Eliz., c. i, 29 Eliz., c. 6, 1 Eliz., c. 2, § 14, (which is 
the Statute by which a penalty of \2d. is imposed for 
each day's absence from the Sunday service at Church,) 
3 James, c. 3 and 4, and 5, shall not be construed to 
extend to Dissenters who take the Oath of Allegiance, 
make the Declarations against the Pope's pow r er to ex- 
communicate,, &c, and against transubstantiation and 
other Popish doctrines ; nor are they to be liable to the 
penalties of the Acts 35 Eliz., c. 1, or 22 Charles II., 
c. 1. (which was the severe Act against Conventicles), 
nor is any prosecution to be instituted against them, in 
any Ecclesiastical Court, for Non-Conformity to the 
Church of England. They are not, however, when they 
meet in conventicles, to hold such meetings with the 
doors locked, nor are they to be excused from the pay- 
ment of tithe or Church dues : if chosen constables or 
churchwardens, and they scruple to take the oaths, they 
may appoint a deputy. — Then, as to ministers, they 
were to take the Oath and make the Declarations before 
prescribed for the laymen, and, in addition, to subscribe to 
the Articles of Religion of the Church of England, except 
the 34th, 35th and 36th # , and these words of the 20th, 

* One looks with surprise at the scruple against the 34th Article, 
which few of the descendants of these men would not now regard as 
remarkably sensible and liberal, and jealously constructed as to main- 
taining respect for Scripture. It is entitled, ' Of the Traditions of 
the Church,' where, under the word Traditions, Ceremonies and Rites 
are included. There is throughout the Article the most evident desire 
evinced to keep close to Scripture in everything respecting them, 
but leaving a liberty to vary them according to circumstances when 
the Church desired the change. What could be more moderate or 
judicious than this ? The 35th Article directs that the Homilies be 
read, and declares that they contain <c a godly and wholesome doc- 
trine," to which no very serious objection could be made. The 
36th touched the point of ordination, and might be objected to, but 
only by persons who held Episcopal ordination invalid. There might 



360 



THE LIFE OF 



" The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, 
and authority in controversies of faith : and yet," and 
this done, to be exempted from the penalties of 17 
Charles II., c. 2 (the Five Mile Act), and 22 Charles II., 
c. 1, and from the 100L fine of the Act of Uniformity. 
The places of meeting are to be certified to the bishops 
or archdeacons, or to the justices of the peace at the 
General or Quarter Sessions, and to be registered. There 
are clauses especially framed for the benefit of the Anabap- 
tists and Quakers ; and it is declared that the benefit of 
the Act shall not extend to persons denying the doctrine 
of the Trinity. 

These, then, were the terms on which this long con- 
test was brought to a close. No condescension was made 
to any scruple or opinion of the Presbyterians or of any 
other part of the Non- Conforming body, but the general 
administration of ecclesiastical affairs was to proceed as 
heretofore ; or, in other words, the Church was to re- 
main as it had been established in the reign of Edward 
the Sixth, and restored, after its temporary overthrow, 
by the Act of Uniformity. On the other hand, the Non- 
Conforming persons were now recognised by law, and 
were no longer to be interrupted in their religious 
course, but might proceed in whatever way to them- 
selves seemed proper ; the State only requiring of them 
that they should take the Oath of Allegiance as it was 
then newly modified and made consistent with the liberal 
spirit of the English constitution, and make the Declara- 
tions against Popery, which were supposed necessary for 
the security of a Protestant government. Their meeting- 
houses were, however, to be registered, and the doors to 
be kept open to all comers in times of divine service ; 
and the ministers, in addition to the before-mentioned 

be who held Presbyterian ordination valid, and as worthy to be ad- 
mitted to confer privileges and transmit spiritual grace as Episcopal 
ordination ; but we have not met with any expression of opinion 
that ordination by bishops was no ordination at all, which is the 
effect of objecting to the 36th Article. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



361 



Oath and Declarations, were to subscribe the body of the 
Articles of the Church. 

The exception of persons who did not hold the doc- 
trine of the Trinity from the benefit of this Act is one of 
the most remarkable circumstances attending it. Here 
is a little remain of intolerance. In all other respects 
it is founded on that principle of toleration which had 
been gradually growing in all the Protestant states, and 
which had succeeded to the principle of unlimited zeal, 
the duty of setting a regard to the interests of religious 
truth (or what is deemed such) as paramount above 
all other considerations ; — a most dangerous principle, 
leading to the most unrighteous actions, whether it ap- 
pear in persons who can wield the powers of a state, or 
in those whose sphere is limited to the little circle of a 
Non-Conforming congregation. 

This was the first national acknowledgement of the 
principle of toleration in matters of religion in England ; 
a principle full of political wisdom, and tending really, 
as it seems, to the peace of the state, even while it seems 
to endanger it. It is however, it must be confessed, in- 
consistent with that high and chivalric feeling which 
influenced the Christian world in other times, when men 
thought that everything should be sacrificed out of re- 
gard to strengthening the foundations of Christian truth. 
But the truth seems to be, that zeal, however we may 
sometimes admire and approve the exertions to which 
it may prompt, is, like pride, to which it is nearly akin, 
" not made for man." While we live in the midst of 
that great diversity of opinion which will always prevail 
among those who take the Scriptures for their guide, 
respecting what constitutes the revealed will of God for 
the reception and guidance of his whole creation in all 
times and countries, and in what way a visible profession 
shall be made of it, and its sacred influences be perpetuated , 
an ardent zeal for any particular form can never be the 
right state of mind in fallible and erring man, who must 
often be content to find his chiefest satisfaction in the 



362 



THE LIFE OF 



thought that God accepts the humble desire to know 
what is that true and perfect will which he communi- 
cated by his Son, and the persuasion that such is the 
genius and power of Christianity, that in the midst of 
all the diversities of opinion respecting it, there is still 
enough common to all to guide them into that true and 
perfect way which leadeth to everlasting life. 

The course which public policy in England has taken 
since these times has been to the enlargement of the 
liberty of Non-Conformists. On this T shall speak 
briefly afterwards. At present it may suffice to observe, 
that the Act was received with joy through the whole 
ranks of the Non-Conformists, who regarded King Wil- 
liam not only as the saviour of the country from Popery 
and arbitrary power, but as the particular patron of 
themselves, having given them the liberty which they 
so earnestly coveted. And they immediately proceeded, 
with a liberality of exertion of which there are few si- 
milar instances, to the erection of their chapels, the 
foundation of scholarships, the establishment of charities, 
the making provision for their ministers ; thus showing 
that they were in earnest in their desire for the continu- 
ance of a Non- Conforming ministry. 

The ordinations were also now more frequent ; and, 
resuming the notice of the part which Mr. Heywood 
took in the proceedings of the times in which he lived, 
I shall give an account of the first ordination in which 
he was engaged after the passing of the Toleration Act. 
It was held at Alverthorpe, a place which, next to his 
own places in his own parish, seems to have been most 
frequently favoured with his services, and with it I shall 
close the present chapter. 

" I preached on Lord's day, September 1, 1689, and 
in the close of the exercise gave public notice, that upon 
Wednesday following there would be a sermon and 
some other ordinances, to which whoever had a desire 
might repair ; for we had appointed the persons con- 
cerned to come on the Tuesday forenoon for the pre- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



363 



paration work. Accordingly, when I was come to Mr. 
Nailor's most of them were come and ready." " Mr. Car- 
rington, who was come from Lancaster, told Mr. Hey- 
wood and Mr. Dawson aside what bickerings he had had 
with his people about ordination, they desiring it might 
be at Lancaster, and if we two would promise to come 
over thither he would not now be ordained : he urged 
us to it very importunately, and said, ' Oh ! what a light 
would it raise in that ignorant place ! ' but we denied 
him, because it's a great journey and now winter is upon 
us ; so he determined to accept of it there." The other 
candidates ordained with him were, (1.) " Mr. John 
Holdsworth, who had been a preacher at least twelve years, 
and was loth to be drawn to this work through a sense 
of his own insufficiency ; but we knew him to be a pious 
man and a good preacher, and therefore promised to 
deal gently with him. He was one of Mr. Frankland's 
scholars, but, by reason of his father's low estate, could 
not continue long enough, but came home and taught 
school, and now preacheth at Morley, Alverthorpe, Pon- 
tefract. He did answer tolerably, and had a good thesis 
concerning justification, and disputed ; (2.) Mr. John 
Lister; (3.) Mr. John Ray; and (4.) Mr. Peter Green 
from Manchester. The ministers who were concerned 
in the ordination were, Mr. Hey wood, Mr. Hawden, 
Mr. Johnson, Mr. Nailor, and Mr. Dawson. They all 
went through the preparatory work very satisfactorily ; 
but Mr. Carrington, who had been educated under 
Frankland, astonished the ordaining ministers, as "he 
stood at a chair-back and poured out a discourse in Latin 
(which seemed to be extempore, I am sure it was me- 
moriter) concerning ordination, proving the validity of 
ordination by a presbytery and answering objections." 
He told them also " how much his friends (who were 
of Cheshire, where he was born) were against his under- 
taking the ministry ; but his resolution for God and good 
of souls engaged him ; yet he was not certain whether 
his heart was upright or his grace sincere and saving."— 



364 



THE LIFE OF 



"That night there came four gentlemen on purpose 
from Lancaster to us ; old Alderman Greenwood and his 
son Austin, and the next morning Mr. Moxon and Mr. 
Hartley, to countenance the business, whereby they gave 
their approbation of Mr. Carrington to be their minister. 
The next morning we met about eight o'clock ; they 
were all there except Mr. Carrington ; he lodged at Mr. 
Nailor's ; the family told me he walked out as soon as 
he rose, very early, and they had not seen him since. 
Ten o'clock came, he came not ; but we resolved to 
proceed ; ordered the work of the day ; only Mr. Daw- 
son desired that we might hear some of their confessions 
privately, before they appeared in public. We desired 
Mr. Ray to read us his confession ; he did : it was so 
well approved of, and time was almost gone, that we 
omitted the rest. So we went to go into the chapel; people 
were come. As we went in there came a man and horse 
to Mr. Dawson, to desire him to go beyond Morley to a 
sick woman ; he would needs be gone. I told him he 
must not leave us, our work was more necessary at that 
time : he began with prayer ; prayed half an hour or 
more ; then Mr. Dawson would needs be gone, and did 
go ; we could not hold him, though it was a great 
weakening of our hands, and discouragement to the 
hearts of some of the young men, as though he was not 
satisfied about them j that was not the cause, but he left 
us, and came at us no more : so we went on with our 
work, though we were but four ordainers and five to be 
ordained. Mr. Nailor proceeded to preach us a sermon 
on Matthew ix. 37, 38, of the sending forth labourers; 
it was a good discourse : but still Mr. Carrington came 
not ; I was troubled ; went out ; we sent a man to look 
for him, who found him walking in a lane, reading in a 
book ; told him he would follow him ; at last he came. 
I went into the pulpit ; examined them, one by one, of 
their ends in undertaking the ministry, resolution to 
perform the duties of that calling against all opposition, 
&c, which they answered largely and satisfactorily. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



365 



Then I desired them to make confession of their faith. 
Mr. Holdsworth began ; did it solidly : so did Mr. Lister, 
Mr. Ray ; then Mr. Carrington ran through the whole 
body of divinity, according to Mr. Baxter's Methodus 
Theologies, going through the four states of man, namely, 
innocency, apostacy, recovery, glory. He was indeed 
very large, but exact and accurate, and had it all in his 
memory. Mr. Green was more confused, but did ho- 
nestly ; but followed Mr. Joseph Allein's method and 
much his views of covenanting. When they had dis- 
patched that work we proceeded to setting them apart. 
I came down, and there being a void space made, we 
made them kneel down, one by one, while we all prayed 
over them." Then followed the imposition of hands, de- 
livery of the Bible, right hand of fellowship, exhortation 
to the ordained, and an exhortation also to the people ; 
then prayer, singing a psalm, and the blessing. The service 
continued till five o'clock, when the ministers adjourned 
to Mr. Nailor's, where a dinner was prepared at the 
common charge of the young men ordained. Certificates 
were given them # . 

* Mr. Carrington, whose singular conduct Mr. Heywood de- 
scribes, was the next year the person second only to Mr. Jollie in 
the ridiculous affair of the Surey Demoniac, of which afterwards. 
He was the author of the principal tract in favour of the delusion. 
He continued at Lancaster, minister of the dissenting congregation 
there, till his death, in March 1701, at the age of forty. Of the 
other ministers then ordained, Mr. Lister and Mr. Ray also died at 
an early age. 



366 



THE LIFE OF 



CHAPTER XVI. 
1689—1694. 

MR. HEYWOOD'S PERSONAL STATE AT THE TIME WHEN THE ACT OF 
TOLERATION GAVE RELIEF. THE AFFAIR OF THE SUREY DE- 
MONIAC. ORDINATION OF MR. KIRSHAW AND INDEPENDENT OB- 
JECTIONS. ATTEMPT AT A GENERAL UNION OF THE PRESBYTERIANS 

AND INDEPENDENTS. HEADS OF AGREEMENT DETERMINED ON BY 

THE MINISTERS IN LONDON. MEETING AT WAKEFIELD OF THE 

WEST RIDING MINISTERS, AT WHICH THEY ARE ASSENTED TO.< 

MEETINGS OF MINISTERS. MR. SMITH'S PROPOSITION. ORDINA- 
TION OF DR. COLTON OF YORK; AND OF OTHERS. SEVERAL PUB- 
LICATIONS OF MR. HEYWOOD'S. LORD WHARTON. 

At the point of time at which we are now arrived Mr. 
Heywood had reached his sixtieth year, a period when 
men begin to feel their natural strength a little abated, 
and when in those days, more than in these times, they 
began to think it amiable and becoming in them to take 
the meditative rather than the active, and to be as men 
waiting in a state of repose for the hour when their 
change should come. No one might have retired from the 
hurry of life with a stronger persuasion that he had done 
the work which it was given him to do than Mr. Hey- 
wood, whose energies had been exerted to the utmost in 
that troublesome course which he had thought it his 
duty to take. Whatever view we may take of that course, 
we cannot withhold from him, justly, the full effect of 
the expression applied to another itinerant in a singular 
course of self-appointed duty — 

" Servant of God ! well done ! " 
or look upon him in any other light than as a man who 
took a severe view of the duty required of him, and who 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



367 



acted uniformly, steadily, and faithfully up to his con- 
victions, with a constant and reverential regard to the 
solemn truth that he was 

" Ever in his great task -master's eye." 

But in the twelve years which remain of Mr. Hey- 
wood's life, we shall not find him yielding to any weak 
supposition of his own inability for continued exertion, 
or ceasing to do everything in the full discharge of the 
duties belonging to the mode of life to which he had been 
destined. The law, by now taking himself and others who 
thought and acted with him under its protection, had 
wrought a great change in his position and mode of 
action ; and not less had been the effect of the change 
which ensued in the Non-Conforming body, when the 
ministers fell each into his place as the minister of 
some particular congregation, just as in the Church each 
minister has his limited portion of the vineyard assigned 
to him. Mr. Hey wood is henceforth to be regarded as the 
stated minister of the Dissenting congregation meeting at 
the chapel at Northowram, the principal village in what 
had been in former times his chapelry of Coley ; and in 
that situation we shall find him assiduously employing 
himself, but still, as heretofore, visiting, from time to 
time, distant places, and either assisting his brethren in 
the ministry in their meeting-places, or conducting pri- 
vate services in the houses of those of his former reli- 
gious acquaintances, whom, in darker and more dangerous 
times, he had been accustomed to visit. He was also, 
as we shall see, the most forward in all the works of 
ordination, and in other public proceedings of the Non- 
Conformists in the country around. 

In the first incident which we have to notice, Mr. 
Heywood appears, in common with many of his bre- 
thren, in a position, which, when looked at from these 
more enlightened times, seems to require rather to be 
excused than defended. 

We have seen that his mind was not free from those 



368 



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mistakes to which minds of a strong devotional cast 
seem more peculiarly liable, respecting the unusual 
forms which certain maladies are sometimes seen to as- 
sume. The possibility of demoniacal possession was an 
article of his creed, as of that of many of his contempo- 
raries, and he was in this year, 1689, engaged in an 
affair which brought no small share of ridicule on the 
persons concerned in it, and exposed the body of the 
Non-Conformist ministers in the borders of Yorkshire 
and Lancashire to the suspicion, undoubtedly unjust, of 
seeking to strengthen their interest by arts which had 
been practised a century before with better success. The 
case was this : — 

One Richard Dugdale, who lived at Surey, in the 
neighbourhood of Clitheroe and not far from the house 
of Mr. Jollie, was afflicted with a disease, which baf- 
fled the skill of Dr. Crabtree, one of the most eminent 
of the medical practitioners in that country. It at length 
became the common persuasion that it was no case of 
ordinary disease, but direct possession, and leaving the 
physicians, the young man's friends had recourse to the 
divines. Mr. Jollie visited him, and with little hesita- 
tion pronounced it to be a case of the kind supposed. 
He used the strong expression, that it was " as real a 
possession as any in the Gospels." Mr. Carrington of 
Lancaster was of the same opinion ; and it appearing to 
them that the patient could be relieved only by prayer 
and fasting, fast-days were appointed, at which Mr. 
Hey wood and Mr. Frankland attended, as did also other 
ministers in those parts, Mr. Sagar, Mr. Kirshaw, Mr. 
Waddington, and Mr. Whalley. Nor were they the only 
Non-Conforming ministers concerned in this affair ; for 
another Mr. Hey wood, Mr. Thomas Crompton, Mr. 
John Crompton, Mr. Parr, Mr. Eaton, Mr. Scoles, and 
one of the Angiers took a part. At one of the meetings 
Mr. Heywood preached from 1 John iii. 8 : " For this 
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might 
destroy the works of the devil." This appears to have 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



369 



been on the 22nd of September, 1689, but we have no 
diary for the period, and there is very little in any part 
of Mr. Heywood's papers on the subject, The boy re- 
covered ; and some years after, namely, in 1697, Mr. 
Jollie thought proper to publish an account of what was 
done, in which he attributed the cure to the prayers of 
the Non-Conforming ministers. The title of his tract 
was, £ The Surey Demoniac/ which was soon met by 
another tract, entitled ' The Surey Impostor,' the author 
of which was Mr. Zachary Taylor. The object of this 
tract was not to show that Dugdale himself was an im- 
postor, but that there was imposture in attributing his 
cure to the prayers of the ministers. It produced a 
sharp controversy, in which Mr. Carrington was engaged 
in defence of the ministers, but Mr. Hey wood kept him- 
self aloof. Most of the pamphlets relating to this affair, 
one of the latest of the kind, are in the British Museum. 

In 1691 Mr. Heywood was engaged in another ordi- 
nation, in which there were some remarkable circum- 
stances. The candidate was Mr. Nicholas Kirshaw, who 
had studied in Frankland's academy, which he entered 
in 1680. He had succeeded Mr. Issot (who died early 
in life) as minister of the Non-Conformists in Craven, 
and had been "preaching honestly and living exem- 
plarily" two or three years, when he applied to Mr. 
Heywood to be ordained. The 8th of April was the 
time appointed, on which day Mr. Heywood repaired to 
John Hey's in Craven, supposing the service would be 
performed there, but he found that it had been deter- 
mined to perform it at Mr. Frankland's at Rathmel, near 
Settle, five miles further. When he arrived at Rathmel, 
he found Mr. Jollie and Mr. Sagar. Mr. Jollie was full 
of his congregational objections, which the Presbyterian 
ministers undertook to answer. The objections which 
he urged throw a strong light on the difference in judg- 
ment on this point between the two great sections of 
Dissent. They were, — (1.) that messengers of other 
churches ought to be present as witnesses of the ordina- 

2 B 



370 



THE LIFE OF 



tion, that if Mr. Kirshaw should be called to minister 
among them, they might know that he was regularly or- 
dained : to which it was replied, that such a thing had 
never been practised ; that no notice of such a desire 
had been given ; that they must then send to all the 
congregations in England ; that there would be the tes- 
timony of the ministers present, whose testimony would 
be received. (2.) The next objection was the old one, 
that the minister ought to be ordained in the congrega- 
tion in which he was to serve. To this it was replied, 
that it was thought expedient that it should be so, yet 
in this case it was not so done for the convenience of 
Mr. Frankland's thirty-eight scholars, who could not go 
so far, and desired to be present ; that there were the 
chief members of the society present, who in the name 
of the whole declared their satisfaction with what was 
doing, and who certified their approbation of him and 
choice of him to be their pastor in writing. (3.) He 
insisted that Mr. Kirshaw should preach before them, 
which was inconvenient on account of time, and finally 
compromised by Mr. Kirshaw giving the heads of the 
last discourse he had delivered. (4.) He wished the 
ordination to be deferred till the terms of the agreement 
between the Presbyterians and Independents were known. 
To this the Presbyterians replied, that it was fitting they 
should observe their old method till that agreement was 
known to them, when they might do as it seemed fitting. 
(5.) He objected, "Lay hands suddenly on no man," 
desiring further time. It was answered, that Mr. Kir- 
shaw was sufficiently known ; he had been a minister 
several years, his people knew his manner of life, and 
the ministers to ordain him might have a taste of his 
abilities. (6.) He thought the examination should take 
place on one day, and the ordination on the next. It 
was replied, that if many were to be ordained this might 
be done, but as there was only one, one day was suffi- 
cient time for the whole work. He was thus driven 
from every point, and at last he pressed for deferring the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



371 



ordination till the next day ; but this also Mr. Heywood 
resisted, as he had engaged to preach the next day at 
John Hey's. It is wonderful that all this cavilling did 
not teach the Presbyterian ministers two truths :• — 
(1.) that it was hazardous to unite themselves with the 
Independents in works such as these, or indeed in any- 
thing connected with ecclesiastical affairs ; and (2.) that 
it was expedient to establish forthwith a certain code of 
rules for the direction of all such proceedings as these. 

When the question of postponing the service for a day 
was put to the vote, Mr. Jollie stood alone, except that 
Mr. Sagar professed himself neuter. "I desired them 
affectionately that we might not spend more time in dis- 
pute, for we had argued above an hour, but fall to work." 
They had not, however, yet done with Mr. Jollie ; for 
when the thesis was spoken of, it appeared that no no- 
tice had been given to Mr. Kirshaw to prepare one ; but 
Mr. Frankland testified to the abilities of his pupil in 
that way, and desired that any questions might be pro- 
pounded to him, and dispute extempore ; but Mr. Jollie 
slighted that " as inconsiderable, making no great reck- 
oning of it, but desiring he might be dealt with about a 
principle of grace. And when Mr. Kirshaw had made 
a confession of his faith, which he did largely, accu- 
rately, and satisfactorily, and a declaration of the sub- 
stantial of order and discipline, which he did according 
to the Presbyterian principles," Mr. Jollie told him that 
"his substantiate were not substantial, and he deserved 
a severe rebuke." Mr. Kirshaw replied, that Mr. Jollie 
himself had put him on that task, and he had but de- 
clared his judgment. " Yes," said Mr. Jollie, " so you 
might do, but you need not have added your reasons." 
After this unseemly dialogue, Mr. Jollie was more averse 
than before, and said that he was dissatisfied. The 
other ministers desired Mr. Dawson to go to prayer. 
Then the certificate was read : Mr. Jollie and Mr. Sagar 
were both desired to go to prayer, but both refused, and 
sat by the whole day taking no part in the proceedings; 

2 b 2 



372 



THE LIFE OF 



Mr. Hey wc od then undertook the duty of praying over 
the candidate, and first laying on of hands. Mr. Jollie 
and Mr. Sagar refused to lay on theirs ; so that 
only Mr. Heywood, Mr. Frankland, Mr. Dawson, Mr. 
Carrington, and Mr. Whalley did so. Then followed 
the presenting the Bible, and giving the right hand of 
fellowship. Mr. Heywood then preached to the candi- 
date and the people, and this unsatisfactory business 
ended with singing and prayer. The rest of the mini- 
sters remained together for the night, but Mr. Jollie 
and Mr. Sagar rode away. 

We next find Mr. Heywood taking the lead in an affair 
of material consequence in the history of Dissent. 

Various had been the attempts on the part of the 
more moderate men of each party to bring the Presby- 
terians and the Independents into a state of amicable 
union, as a support to each other and to strengthen the 
Dissenting interest ; beside that, apart from the great 
peculiarities of the opinion of each party, there was much 
in common in their zeal for promoting virtue and holi- 
ness,, and in their being branches of the same great Pu- 
ritan family. When the Toleration Act had placed them 
both under the protection of the law, and the whole 
Dissenting body was about to act under more favour- 
able circumstances than heretofore, it appeared to be a 
favourable opportunity for renewing their former at- 
tempts at union, and the business was begun appa- 
rently with good faith and good feeling on both sides. 
It originated in London, or at least the measures neces- 
sary to effect it were carried on there, and certain terms 
of agreement settled. These were sent to the ministers 
in various parts of the kingdom, with letters of recom- 
mendation that they should endeavour to promote this 
union in the several districts in which they resided. 
The paper was thus entitled : " Heads of Agreement as- 
sented to by the United Ministers in and about London, 
formerly called Presbyterian and Congregational, not as 
a measure for any National Constitution, but for the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 373 

preservation of order in our Congregations that cannot 
come up to the common Rule by Law established." 
This paper, which may be read at large in Dr. Calamy's 
' Historical Additions [to the Life of Baxter] after the 
Revolution of 1688,' pp. 476 — 483, contains a multi- 
tude of propositions, and is little less than a body of arti- 
cles both of faith and religious practice. It is difficult to 
give an idea of such a document in a small compass, and 
it is of the less consequence, as, though it was at the 
time agreed to by most of the Non-Conforming mini- 
sters in and about London, the union was in a very few 
years, even as early as 1694, dissolved^, and the Pres- 
byterians and Independents of London reverted to their 
original state, each having their own ministers, congre- 
gations, and meeting-houses, and having, as before, their 
distinct and peculiar principles and objects. 

In the country these Heads of Agreement were gene- 
rally received in a conciliatory spirit. The Cheshire 
ministers subscribed their assent to them at a meeting 
held at Macclesfield in March 1691, Mr. Samuel An gier 
being the moderator. In the summer of that year the 
ministers in Nottinghamshire assented, as did also the 
ministers in the parts of Lancashire about Manchester, 
where, however, were very few who classed themselves 
with the Independents. Still nothing was done in the 
West Riding of Yorkshire. At length Mr. Sharp, the 
Presbyterian minister at Leeds, and Mr. Whitaker, the 
Independent minister, both moderate men, wrote to Mr. 
Heywood, telling him that the work depended upon him. 
He was for appointing a meeting at Leeds to consider the 
Heads, but this pleased neither Mr. Sharp nor Mr. Whita- 
ker, who thought Leeds too public a place, and desired 
that it might be held at Morley. Mr. Heywood consulted 

* It was broken up in consequence of doctrinal differences, most 
of the Presbyterians beginning at this time to advance even from the 
diluted Calvinism of Baxter to Arminianism, while the tendency of 
most of the Independents was towards the Calvinism of the Assem- 
bly's Catechism and something more. 



374 



THE LIFE OF 



with Mr. Dawson, the minister at Morley, but he and 
the people thought Morley not a convenient place ; 
whereupon Mr. Heywood set down peremptorily Wake- 
field as the place at which it should be held, and the 
time September 2, the day when a lecture was usually 
preached at the house of Mrs. Kirby, the widow of the 
old Cambden lecturer there. The next difficulty was to 
find a preacher ; Mr. Sharp declined ; so did Mr. Whita- 
ker and Mr. Ward of York : at last this duty devolved 
on Mr. Heywood. When the day came there was a 
great assembly, " it being a strange business to see so 
many ministers together, all Non-Conformists." The 
town was alarmed, and when the service at Mrs. Kirby's 
was over, the ministers thought it prudent to go apart, 
and by several ways, to the house at which they dined. 
They then returned to their registered house, where they 
formed themselves into a deliberative assembly. They 
were in all twenty- four, twenty ordained ministers, and 
four who were only candidates, yet preachers. It can- 
not but gratify some at least of those who will be the 
readers of this work to see their names as Mr. Heywood 
has preserved them, arranged in the order of seniority 
as they sat in this assembly. Nearly thirty years had 
passed since the Uniformity Act, but of the West Riding 
ministers there were nine of those who had been ejected 
present on this occasion. They are here distinguished 
from the rest : — 

Mr. Richard Frankland of Rathmei. 

Mr. Prime of Sheffield. 

Mr. Thomas Johnson, living at Painthorpe. 

Mr. William Hawden, living in Wakefield. 

Mr. Oliver Heywood of Northowram. 

Mr. Thomas Sharp of Leeds. 

Mr. Joseph Dawson of Morley. 

Mr. David Noble of Heckmonwyke. 

Mr. Wharam of Great Houghton. 

Mr. Baxter of Sheffield. 

Mr. Richard Thorpe of Hopton-hall. 

Mr. Thomas Whitaker of Leeds. 

Mr. Thomas Elston of Topcliffe. 



OLIVER HEYVVOOD. 



375 



Mr. Matthew Smith of Mixenden. 
Mr. John Holds worth of Alverthorpe. 
Mr. James Wright of Attercliffe. 
Mr. John Hey wood of Ravenfield. 
Mr. Eliezer Hey wood of Walling- wells. 
Mr. John Lister of Elland. 
Mr. John Ray of the Closes. 

Candidates. 

Mr. Nathaniel Priestley of Warley. 
Mr. Jonathan Wright of Idle. 
Mr. Sagar of Alverthorpe. 
Mr. Gill of Pontefract*. 

As soon as the assembly was composed, there being 
many gentlemen and other persons present, Mr. Hey- 
wood requested Mr. Frankland, the senior minister, to 
recommend the work on which they were met to the 
blessing of God in prayer. Then Mr. Heywood took 
the Heads of the Agreement and read them over delibe- 
rately, pausing at the close of each paragraph to give 
any of the ministers present liberty and opportunity to 
object. No objection was made by any person present, 
except Mr. Frankland to a few of the articles, and his 
objections were overruled. In fine they accorded in the 
terms of the agreement, with little apparent reserve of 
any dissentient opinion. 

This was the first of a series of such assemblies of the 
ministers of the West Riding, and there were similar 
assemblies in every other part of the kingdom, which 
were technically called " Meetings of Ministers," a term 
which was used in preference to synod or provincial as- 
sembly, to avoid giving offence to the bishops and con- 
vocation. These meetings continued to be held peri- 
odically in the West Riding by the ministers of the Old 
Dissent for more than a century, and at them business 
interesting to the body at large was discussed, the affairs 

* It will be perceived that the York ministers were not present, 
perhaps as not regarding York a portion of the West Riding. There 
are also a few names which might have been expected to appear in 
this list, and do not, the most remarkable of which is that of Timo- 
thy Jollie of Sheffield, for whose absence I am unable to account. 



376 



THE LIFE OF 



of particular congregations sometimes considered, and 
the time and place of ordination services, as long as or- 
dination was used, were settled. 

At this the first meeting of the kind, beside the prin- 
cipal business, other business was brought before it ; 
for Mr. Matthew Smith, who had certain doctrinal 
opinions different from those of most of his brethren, 
proposed to the ministers present the abstract question, 
whether he was not bound to declare in his ministry the 
whole counsel of God ; and this he followed by another 
question quite as ensnaring, whether he should preach 
in favour of discipline. The difficulty in these questions 
lies in the impossibility of returning at once a categorical 
answer. No answer could be given to either without a 
great deal of qualification, and this Mr. Smith ought to 
have known, and therefore to have forborne on such an 
occasion to propose them. It produced a slight dis- 
agreement, for one of his congregation, who happened 
to be present, denied that they had ever restrained him 
from preaching upon discipline. The ministers acted 
wisely. They recommended peace and unity ; and so 
ended Mr. Smith's affair ; but to a reflecting mind it 
must have shown, in this first beginning of their legal- 
ized existence, that though they might abominate the spi- 
ritual courts which had been the instruments of so much 
evil to their forefathers and some of themselves, if there 
is to be any order maintained in an extensive ecclesiastical 
union, there must be a regulating power somewhere, and 
strength given to enforce its decisions. 

When evening was coming on, Mr. Frankland was in 
haste to withdraw. Mr. Heywood besought him to stay, 
that he might close the day's work with prayer. He 
however declined, as did also Mr. Sharp, Mr. Whitaker, 
Mr. Prime, and others ; so this duty also fell on Mr. Hey- 
wood, who then dismissed the assembly # . 

* Among the laymen present at this meeting was Ralph Thoresby 
of Leeds, who speaks of it thus in his diary: — " 1691, Sept. 2. 
Morning, at worthy Mr. Sharp's, with whom and Mr. Whitaker, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



377 



In 1692 Mr. Heywood was concerned in an ordina- 
tion, where there was no attempt at forcing the repellent 
elements of Preshyterianism and Independency into an 
unnatural union, but all were united on Presbyterian 
principles. The candidate was Dr. Thomas Colton of 
York, a name familiar in the Courts at Westminster as 
that of the executor, friend and pastor of Lady Hewley. 
Dr. Colton applied to the Association for ordination. 
Mr. Heywood desired him to attend their next meeting, 
which was held at Mr. John Holdsworth's in Burstall 
parish, July 14. He preached before them an excellent 
sermon ; he preached also twice in Mr. Heywood's 
own meeting-place, giving most abundant satisfaction. 
He was then about thirty years of age, and had been 
chaplain to Sir William Ayscough several years ; but 
having an inclination to study physic, he had gone to 
Holland and studied there, taking a degree in medicine. 
It was proposed that other candidates should be or- 
dained at the same time, but as they were not prepared, 
it was determined that some of the Association should 
repair to York, and there perform the service for Dr. 
Colton alone. The 24th of August was fixed upon as 
the day, and there being a meeting of ministers on the 
17th, Mr. Heywood brought the subject forward; but 
all, with the exception of Mr. John Lister, excused 
themselves. Mr. Heywood and Mr. Lister therefore 

and Mr. Samuel Ibbetson rode to Wakefield ; heard the lecture ser- 
mon ; Mr. Heywood preached well and suitably to the convention 
from Zech. xiv. 9, ' In that day there shall be one Lord and his name 
One.' Afterwards that good man (itinerant preacher or apostle of 
these parts) read each of the Heads of the Agreement of the united 
ministers in and about London. Most were unanimously assented 
to by the brethren of both persuasions ; others modestly discussed 
and explained, and, which I rejoiced to observe, without the least 
passionate expression. The truly reverend Mr. Frankland and Mr. 
Sharp in their arguments showed abundance of learning as well as 
piety, and were unanswered, even in what was not readily assented 
to by some juniors, about synods and re -ordination. Had the plea- 
sing society of many excellent ministers from all parts of the West 
Riding." 



378 



THE LIFE OF 



repaired to York alone, where they inquired of Dr. 
Colton if he had engaged the three ministers who lived 
about York to join them in the service. Dr. Colton 
said two of them had promised to attend, but his letter 
to Mr. Cornelius Todd at Helaugh had failed. Notice 
was given to the congregation, and there was a goodly 
assembly the next morning in the chamber at Mr. An- 
drew Taylor's, where the York Dissenters still met, 
their chapel not being yet built. The service began at 
ten with prayer by the ministers in succession. Dr. 
Colton was then examined " concerning the grace of 
God in him, his call to the ministry, his purpose to give 
himself wholly to it, continuance in it, his resolution for 
faithful managing of it according to the rules in the 
Directory. We examined him concerning the Hebrew, 
Greek, of the authors he had read in divinity ; asked 
him the meaning of some scriptures ; proposed a ques- 
tion in divinity — An Fides sola justificat ? which was dis- 
puted on, and some opposed. We read his testimonials, 
subscribed by some ministers and heads of the congre- 
gation. Then he made a solemn confession of his faith 
very accurately and learnedly ; then he kneeled down, 
and I prayed over him, and in the middle of the prayer, 
laying on my hand, the rest laid on their hands ; and 
that being done, we gave him the right hand of fellow- 
ship, and put the Bible into his hand. Then we sat 
down, and I gave him an exhortation grounded on 
2 Cor. xii. 1 1 . Then I concluded with prayer and 
praise, and dismissed the company with a blessing." 
The two York ministers who were engaged were Noah 
Ward, who had been ejected, and Timothy Hodgson, 
Sir John Hewley's chaplain. 

In 1693 Mr. Hey wood was engaged in another ordi- 
nation service at Mr. Frankland's at Rathmel, where five 
young ministers were ordained. They were Mr. Roger 
Anderton, then settled at Whitehaven, whose people sent 
a very full testimonial of his abilities, usefulness, and 
conversation ; Mr. John Holland, then settled in Swale- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



379 



dale ; Mr. Edward Rothwell at Poulton-in-the-Fylde, 
among a very ignorant but willing and numerous peo- 
ple ; Mr. James Mitchel, son of Mr. Heywood's Craven 
friend, Richard Mitchel of Marton Scar, who was called 
to preach at Chippin and Bolton ; and Mr. Joseph Daw- 
son, son of the Mr. Dawson so often mentioned, who 
then preached at Harford near Richmond, but the chief 
part of whose ministerial life was spent at Rochdale. 
The ministers engaged were Mr. Hey wood, Mr. Frank- 
land, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Carrington, and Mr. Puncheon, 
a new name, a minister then settled at Rosendale in 
Westmoreland. The day was June 7, 1693. The exa- 
mination in this case consisted in each being called upon 
to pray and deliver a discourse ; then the thesis and dis- 
putation. The business was continued the following 
morning with the questions from the Directory and the 
Confessions of Faith, which were followed by the laying 
on of hands in the usual form, and the other ceremo- 
nies # . 

In 1694, Mr. Jonathan Wright, Mr. Nathaniel Priest- 
ley, and Mr. Accepted Lister were ordained, all of whom 
had studied under Mr. Frankland. It was proposed that 
it should be at Mr. Heywood's meeting-house, but it 

* Mr. Heywood takes notice of another ordination service this 
year, in which he was not engaged. It was that of Mr. Sagar, at his 
father's house at Blackburn, September 20, 1693, the very day that 
there was a meeting of sixteen ministers at Wakefield. The mini- 
sters who ordained were Mr. Jollie, Mr. Sagar, senior (the father of 
the candidate), Mr. Waddington, and Mr. John Walker. Mr. Sagar 
was then about to be pastor of the congregation at Alverthorpe. 
Mr. Heywood was invited to meet Mr. Jollie, Mr. Sagar, senior, and 
others at Wakefield, to be present at the settling of Mr. Sagar, ju- 
nior, at Alverthorpe, when another peculiar service was performed ; 
but he excused himself, having planned a journey into Lancashire. 

He notices also an ordination in April 1694, in which however he 
was not personally concerned. This was held at Stand in Pilking- 
ton, when Mr. Thomas Dickenson, then minister at Gorton, but who 
succeeded Mr. Heywood at Northowram, Mr. Loe of Chorton, and 
Mr. Samuel Baxter of Attercliffe, were ordained by Mr. Newcome, 
Mr. Eaton, Mr. Samuel Angier, and others. It was said there were 
thirty ministers present, and a numerous assembly. 



380 



THE LIFE OF 



was finally determined that it should be at Horton, near 
Bradford, where Mr. Wright and Mr. Priestley then were 
preachers. The day was June 6. There were Mr. 
Frankland, Mr. Heywood, Mr. Thorpe, and other mini- 
sters whose names are not preserved. The examination, 
theses, and other introductory work was carried on at 
Mr. Sharp's. It was then proposed to adjourn to the 
chapel ; but this was opposed by Mr. Thorpe as danger- 
ous, and likely to fill the country with talk. "I told 
him it would be less dangerous in the chapel than in 
that unlicensed place, and it was practised elsewhere 
publicly and without offence." Finally they adjourned 
to the meeting-house, where was a great assembly, in- 
cluding several other ministers, as Mr. Ray, Mr. Kir- 
shaw, and two sons of Mr. Dawson, who was ill. The 
candidates made a confession of their faith "largely, 
going through the principles of religion, reading them 
in the audience of the congregation severally and di- 
stinctly." Mr. Heywood then asked them the usual 
questions from the Directory. The rest was in the usual 
form. The three ministers here ordained exercised their 
ministry afterwards in the parts about Halifax and Brad- 
ford, being themselves in their turn those who ordained 
the next generation of West Riding ministers. 

During the years for which we have neither diary nor 
autobiography, Mr. Heywood was much employed in 
preparing works for the press. His writings are all very 
similar in design and character, their end being to pro- 
mote practical religion, and varying only in the subject 
with which the instruction is combined. I shall give 
little more than the titles of the works as they appeared 
in chronological order. 

' Meetness for Heaven,' 1690. This is in fact a fu- 
neral discourse on Colossians i. 12. He inscribes it to 
his "hearers, friends, and neighbours." One passage 
from this address I must transcribe : — " I have observed 
a commendable practice of some Christians, which is, 
to order some books to be distributed at their funerals : 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



381 



the first that I know of that nature was Mr. R. A.'s 
Vindicits Pietatis , and some other practical pieces, which 
by God's blessing have done much good. Such a me- 
morandum would I bequeath as my last legacy to you, 
my dear people, amongst whom I have laboured above 
thirty-nine years in public and private, serving the Lord 
in some measure of integrity and humility, with many 
tears and temptations, through a variety of dispensations, 
excommunications, banishments, confiscations, and im- 
prisonments ; but out of all these the Lord hath delivered 
me, and set my feet in a large place ; and God, that 
searcheth the heart, knows what hath been my design 
in studying, preaching, praying, and preparing for you 
a place to meet in to worship God ; and what are the 
agonies and jealousies of my spirit to this day, lest I 
leave any of you unconverted, and so cashiered from 
God's presence at the great day ; and now at last I so- 
lemnly charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ 
and the elect angels, that you rest not in a graceless state 
another day, lest that be the last day, and ye be found 
unready." This is the high tone of the old Puritan, and 
of the regularly ordained minister who felt that it was 
his calling to warn them as one having authority, and 
who had himself to give account of his charge. 

' A Family Altar erected to the Honour of the Eternal 
God, or a Solemn Essay to promote the Worship of God 
in Private Houses.' The Epistle to the Reader is dated 
February 2, 1692—3. It has also a Recommendatory 
Epistle, signed John Starkey and John Howe, the latter 
being the minister of that name who had a high reputa- 
tion in the dissenting community of that day. This 
again is one of his sermons, enlarged perhaps, but may 
be taken as a specimen of his style of preaching. The 
text is Gen. xxxv. 1 — 3. 

' The Best Entail, or dying parents' living hopes for 
their surviving children, grounded upon the covenant of 
God's grace with believers and their seed,' 1693. This 
also is a sermon enlarged. It is dedicated to Philip Lord 



382 



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Wharton, " whose morning star of early piety continues 
still shining bright in a good old age, and hath cast out 
resplendent beams of favour upon indigent persons, and 
opened the savour of divine knowledge amongst the ig- 
norant, for which the loins of the poor and souls of the 
instructed will bless you in this and the other world." 
There is no doubt that this, the " good Lord Wharton," 
was a man of great piety and charity, and his bounty 
flowed more particularly towards those who, nursed as 
he was in the spirit of Puritanism, found themselves in 
consequence cast out of the Church, and exposed to 
penury and scorn. Mr. Hey wood had himself received 
other favours from Lord Wharton beside the patronage 
of his school. His language is a little approaching to 
the abject, even when we remember what was the ad- 
mitted style of dedications of the period. " The nearer 
your lordship approacheth to your centre and haven, the 
more sedulous and active are you to lay a foundation for 
religion in future generations ; . . . . for the accomplish- 
ing of this great purpose, a poor inconsiderable worm 
casts his mite into my lord's treasury, and prostrates 
himself at your lordship's feet, in this dedication, in 
testimony of my sincere gratitude for your unparalleled 
kindness and condescension to so humble a person." 
Lord Wharton, who had been one of the lay-members 
of the Assembly of Divines, was one of the best friends 
the Non-Conformist ministers had. He founded chapels 
for them, and his Bible- charity was by him and his ori- 
ginal trustees confided in the details of the administration 
of it to them, nor were they deprived of it till about fifty 
years ago. The public history of the son and the grand- 
son, who inherited the honours of this religious peer, and 
added others to them, is well known. The private history 
of their struggles with the influences of a Puritan educa- 
tion might, if attainable, read some instructi ve lessons. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



383 



CHAPTER XVII. 
1695—1702. 

diary resumed. publishes the new creature. symptoms of 

declining orthodoxy in the non-conformist body. thomas 

bradbury. opening of the chapel at lidget. private con- 
ference of ministers. chapels founded at pontefract; york; 

warley; bingley; rotherham ; pudsey. — writes notices of 

non-conforming ministers. his last visit to lancashire, 

and proceedings of the non-conformists there. invited to 

manchester; halifax. nathaniel priestley. ordination 

of mr. cotton. invited to london. his affairs in respect of 

income, etc. writes a preface to mr. frankland's treatise 

against a socinian. ralph thoresby conforms to the church. 

ordination of mr. blamire. opening of the chapel at 

wakefield. death of mr. frankland. correspondence on 

the history and affairs of non-conformity. singular inci- 
dent at manchester. various publications. mr. sharp. 

mr. sylvester. another ordination. mr. matthew smith's 

heterodoxy. marriage of eliezer heywood. disputes in 

the craven congregation. decline of mr. heywood's health. 

death. funeral. will. portrait. house. chapel. 

ministers at northowram after him. ejected ministers sur- 
viving him. his sons and their descendants. descendants 

of his brother nathaniel. testimonies to his character. 

With the early months of 1695 we begin again to have 
the benefit of that punctual account of the occurrences 
of Mr. Heywood's life which his daily journal presents. 
He continued it till within five days of his death. The 
present chapter will contain what little remains to be 
told of him ; and in the next and concluding chapter 
we shall say something on the results of his labours, 



384 



THE LIFE OF 



and on the changes which have taken place since his 
time in the body of Non-Conformists to which he be- 
longed. We shall take in the present chapter, as before, 
his journal for our guide, selecting from it such entries 
as are in any respect peculiar (his course of life being 
in the main of a more uniform tenor than before, being 
spent chiefly at home in religious meditation and exer- 
cises, and in the discharge of his pastoral duties to his 
congregation at Northowram), or which throw light on 
the state of Non-Conformity, adding such remarks as the 
several extracts may require. 

1695. 

In the beginning of the year he was much employed 
in the preparation of the treatise which he entitled ' A 
New Creature,' a short series of sermons which he had 
delivered to the congregation in his chapel on Galatians 
vi. 15. An epistle is prefixed, addressed "To his dear 
friends and beloved hearers of Northowram in York- 
shire," containing very earnest exhortations to them, and 
a few allusions to his long labouring among them, " his 
tears, temptations, banishment, imprisonment, confisca- 
tions, night travels and preachings, fastings, watchings, 
encouragements and discouragements." He is <c willing 
to leave one legacy more behind him as a standing tes- 
timony to surviving posterity of his long attachment to 
the concerns of their precious souls, and the means of 
their spiritual good, when his mouth is closed in the 
dust." It is quite the epistle of an apostolic man, now 
about " to put off this his tabernacle," and willing that 
those whom he had instructed in his better days " should 
have these things always in remembrance." 

One remark in this epistle is worthy especial notice, 
as it shows that before the first fathers of the Non-Con- 
forming ministry were gone off the stage, and while the 
Non-Conforming body were making preparation for the 
perpetual continuance of such a ministry, the new mode 
of preaching, which soon became general among the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



385 



Presbyterians, was attracting attention, and in the in- 
stance of Mr. Hey wood at least exciting sorrow and alarm. 
He alludes to some discourses of his in which he had 
preached on £< the person, nature, offices, and under- 
taking of our Lord Jesus Christ in all their mediatorial 
latitude ;" and he adds, " though this may seem to be 
out of fashion amongst some who would be esteemed 
rational preachers, and think that treating of Christ is 
but a conceited canting, though the great apostle of the 
Gentiles mentions the name of Christ nine several times 
in his first ten verses in the first chapter of the first 
Epistle to the Corinthians, and in his epistles some hun- 
dreds of times, &c." This was in 1695. 

March 25. " Thomas Bradbury, Mr. Timothy Jollie's 
scholar, came to me ; I conversed with him ; gave him 
some books." This was he who was afterwards an in- 
fluential minister in London, remarkable for his great 
zeal for the ancient doctrine of the English Church when 
many of his brethren were become more or less indiffer- 
ent to it, and for the zealous support which he gave to 
the political party who secured the succession of the 
house of Hanover, of which some remarkable stories are 
preserved in the traditions of Non-Conformity. 

March 28. " Rode to John Armitage's ; preached in 
their new meeting-house the first sermon on Exodus 
xxiv. 1 , 2 ; a dedication of it ; there was a full assembly ; 
then administered the Lord's Supper to about forty." 
This was the Presbyterian chapel still existing at Lidget. 

April 17- 4 4 Consulted authors for conference; Mr. 
Wright, Mr. Priestley, Mr. Lister, Mr. Denton, came 
about eleven o'clock; Mr. Wright begun with prayer; 
we spake to the four questions propounded ; Mr. Smith 
came not ; I concluded with prayer." These were young 
ministers settled at the newly-founded chapels in the 
neighbourhood, who appear to have formed themselves 
into a society for religious conversation and spiritual ex- 
ercises at each others' houses. Mr. Smith was regarded 
with some kind of reserve or suspicion among his bre- 



386 



THE LIFE OF 



thren for certain peculiarities of opinion in point of doc- 
trine. We shall hear more of this. 

May 12, there was a collection made in Mr. Hey- 
wood's chapel for James Whittell, a scholar with Mr. 
Frankland. They gathered thirty shillings. 

In the month of July he visited York. He went first 
to his friend Mr. Oates at Chickenley ; then to Wake- 
field, where he preached the lecture at Mrs. Kirby's ; 
then to Pontefract, where a chapel had been built, of 
which his son, John Heywood, was then the minister. 
He found also that a chapel had been built at York, in 
which he preached. The friends with whom he had 
most intercourse in that city were Sir John and Lady 
Hewley ; but he names also the ministers Mr. Noah Ward 
and Dr. Colton, and the following persons, who ap- 
pear to have been at that time principal persons among 
the Presbyterians of York ; Dr. Nicholson, Mr. Taylor, 
Mr. Geldard, Mr. Fothergill, Mr. Priestley, Mr. Rhodes, 
Mr. Clegg, Mrs. Drake, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Darcy. He 
remarks, that when he preached he had a large congre- 
gation, although the archbishop preached that very day 
at Saint Saviour's Church in the same street. It was the 
assize time, and Mr. Heywood went to the Minster to 
hear the assize sermon. When he was about to take his 
leave, he ct received Lady Hewley 's charity." 

On July 14 he preached a funeral sermon for Mr. Jo- 
nathan Denton, who was buried at Halifax on the 8th. 
This was at the particular request of the deceased, made 
on his death-bed. The sermon was printed under the 
title of ' Job's Appeal/ with a dedication to Mr. John 
Denton of Southwark, brother of the deceased. 

In this month we find him preaching at Warley, 
Bingley, and Idle. At the two former places, meeting- 
houses had been erected ; but at Idle the people met in 
Mr. or Mrs. Ledgard's barn. At all these places Presby- 
terian congregations were formed. 

In August he was assisting at a fast at Josiah Stans- 
field's for two young scholars going to Glasgow. He 



OLIVER HEYVVOOD. 



387 



notices also that there were collections at his chapel for 
the Non-Conformists at Hull and those of Gillingham in 
Dorsetshire. 

In September he visited Rotherham, where a chapel 
had been erected, at which he preached. In this journey 
he visited several friends whose names will be familiar 
to the reader, and others who have not occurred before ; 
as Mr. Thorpe of Hopton, Mr. W. Cotton of Hague- 
hall, Mr. Langley of Barnsley, Dr. Ellis of Brampton, 
w T ho was a great public benefactor, Mr. W. Langley of 
Rotherham, Mr. Hatfield of Laughton, Mr. Westby of 
Ravenfield, and Mr. Taylor of Walling- wells. On his 
return he visited Mr. Riche at Bull-house, where the 
chapel still existing had then been erected. 

In the next month he was preaching at the new chapel 
at Pudsey. 

In October and November he was in correspondence 
with Dr. Sampson, one of the ejected ministers, who was 
making collections preparatory to a history of Puritanism, 
which he never accomplished. The correspondence was 
carried on through their common friend, Mr. Ralph 
Thoresby of Leeds. Mr. Hey wood drew up many bio- 
graphical notices of his brethren in the Non- Conforming 
ministry at this period and in the following year. 

December 28. " Discoursed with a woman pretending 
to be Mr. Angier's daughter." 

1696. 

In May he preached to a great congregation in the 
chapel at Lidget ; and he went to Halifax " to view the 
new meeting-place." 

In June he paid what proved to be his last visit 
to his friends and relations in Lancashire. He set out 
from Northowram on Monday, June 1 ; dined at Josiah 
Stansfield's ; travelled to Rochdale ; light at Mr. Robert 
Milnes' ; lodged at Mr. Anthony Buxton's. Tuesday, rid 
to Manchester to dinner at brother Hilton's ; visited 
Mr. Frankland, cousin Butterworth, Mr. Chorlton, and 

2 c 2 



388 



THE LIFE OF 



many others. Mr. Chorlton had succeeded Mr. New- 
come, who died September 20, 1695, as the minister of 
the Presbyterians of Manchester, who had erected for 
him a large chapel. On Wednesday Dr. Neeld accom- 
panied him to Eccles, where he " preached in their 
meeting-place, a large barn, to a full assembly ; sat 
with my Lord Willoughby afterwards ; then we went to 
Eccles church ; dined, and returned to Manchester." 
Thursday, cousin Eaton went with him to Mrs. Gilliam 
and Mr. Constantine. Friday, went to Mrs. Newcome's, 
" discoursed long with her, prayed with her family ; 
dined with Mr. Chorlton at Mr. Wykes'. Cousin James 
Lomax came for me^ with whom I rode to his house in 
Little Lever. Saturday, baptized Alice, daughter of James 
Lomax ; rode to cousin Peter Rothwell's in Darcy Lever ; 
cousin Park came to me. Sunday, rid to Bolton ; light 
at cousin William Whitehead's ; walked to the meeting- 
house ; preached on Isaiah xliv. 22, my cousin Esther's 
funeral text ; administered the Lord's Supper at noon 
to about five hundred communicants ; dined at cousin 
Park's. Monday, my cousin and I visited Mr. Duhirst ; 
walked to the church-yard ; viewed several relations' 
graves ; went to Mr. Lever's with Mr. Walker, to the 
chapel, who preached ; dined at Mr. Bridge's in Little 
Bolton ; had a meeting of ministers there : cousin Na- 
thaniel Heywood and I came to cousin Crompton's at 
Crompton-Fold ; lodged there. Tuesday, cousin Na- 
thaniel Heywood and I discoursed about some weighty 
things ; came to brother Crompton's. Wednesday, 
preached at Cockey-chapel to a great congregation ; 
dined at cousin Dickenson's ; came to Rochdale : Thurs- 
day, preached at the chapel there : Friday, home." 
We collect from this, that the Non-Conformists in Lan- 
cashire had not been less forward in the work of erect- 
ing meeting-houses and forming themselves into distinct 
congregations than those of Yorkshire. 

July 30. ' ' About ten o'clock my young ministers 
came, Mr. Priestley, Mr. Lister, Mr. Bairstow, Mr. Bla- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD, 



389 



mire, Mr. Walker ; began with prayer ; we conferred 
upon three questions I had proposed to them; T con- 
cluded with prayer." 

August 10. "Rode to Bingley : 11, writ the Pro 
fession of Faith ; went after prayer to Joseph Lister's ; 
read it to them ; consulted with Mr. Farrand, Mr. 
Whalley, Thomas Leach, Michael Broadley, and others ; 
they thought well of it : I examined several communi- 
cants ; went to the chapel, prayed, preached ; then 
administered the Lord's Supper to thirteen or fourteen 
after they had subscribed that profession ; had them all 
at dinner at Robert Walker's ; discoursed." 

August 14. " Set myself, to gratify cousin S. Angier, 
and in him Mr. Bury of Suffolk, in writing-down Non- 
Conforming ministers ; writ all Yorkshire, most of Lan- 
cashire." 

In this month he visited his friends at Leeds and 
York. At Leeds he lodged at the house of Ralph 
Thoresby. While at York he visited Sir John Hewley 
at Bell-hall, who was then confined to his chamber in 
consequence of an accident which had happened a fort- 
night before, and who died soon after Mr. Heywood's 
visit. 

On the 14th of October, two members of the congre- 
gation at Manchester, Mr. Wykes and Mr. Pinkerton, 
came to Northowram to invite Mr. Heywood to be their 
minister, in connexion with Mr. Chorlton, " in their 
spacious and famous meeting-place:" thus Mr. Hey- 
wood speaks of it. "They were so importunate that 
I could not tell what to say to them, but put it off 
that time ; they writ again and again, but T gave them a 
positive denial, that I was resolved to stay where I was." 
He was also about the same time invited to take half the 
service in the new chapel at Halifax, then just com- 
pleted, with the younger minister, Mr. Priestley*. This 

* The name of Priestley is intimately connected with the affairs 
of Non- Conformity in Yorkshire, and indeed in the whole kingdom, 
so that it may be proper to intimate that the minister of the name 



390 



THE LIFE OF 



also he declined ; but he preached the first sermon in 
the chapel on the 11th of November in this year # . 

On November 25, Mr. Thomas Cotton, the son of 
Mr. Heywood's old friend Mr. Cotton of Denby, was 
ordained at Northowram. He had been with Mr. Hey- 
wood's sons both at Mr. Hickman's and Mr. Frankland's, 
and had afterwards travelled abroad with three Yorkshire 
gentlemen, Mr. Wentworth, Mr. Lister of Thornton, 
and Mr. Payler, son of Sir Watkinson Payler. Of this 
tour there is a large account in the ' Life of Mr. Cotton' 
annexed to his ' Funeral Sermon.' On his return he was 
tutor to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of Lord Wharton. 
He determined however to enter upon the regular per- 
formance of his duties in the Presbyterian ministry, and 
had several invitations to settle with congregations, but 
was unwilling to do so till he had received ordination ; 
whereupon he applied to Mr. Frankland and Mr. Hey- 
wood, who consented. Mr. Frankland however was un- 
able to come, and the service was performed by three 
other surviving ejected ministers, namely, Mr. Heywood, 

who was the first pastor of the Presbyterians at Halifax was not of 
the family of Dr. Joseph Priestley, who were Independents, attend- 
ing the chapel at Heckmonwyke, of which Mr. Noble, and after him 
Mr. Kirkby, were the ministers. Mr. Priestley of Halifax was a 
member of a family long seated in that parish, of which the family 
of Priestley of White-Windows are now the representatives. He 
was the son of Jonathan Priestley of Westercroft, Mr. Heywood's 
friend, though there was an estrangement which lasted for ten years 
made up about this time. His wife was a daughter of John Brear- 
cliffe, another friend of Mr. Heywood. He entered Frankland's 
academy in 1682, and continued the minister at Halifax till his 
death, in 1728, when Mr. Dickenson, successor to Mr. Heywood at 
Northowram, speaks of him as " a worthy eminent minister ; a great 
loss, especially to the congregations at Halifax and Bradford." 

* It will easily be believed that the efforts of the Non- Conforming 
body at this period, great as they were, did not always keep pace 
with Mr. Heywood's own impatience. In a letter to his son, dated 
March 16, 1697, he thus speaks of what was done at Halifax : — 
" My poor neighbours Stock are not fully paid for the building 
Halifax chapel ; they that should be active are slack and selfish ; 
hitherto they have lived upon gift-preaching ; I was there the other 
Lord's day, but resolve to keep at home." — Works, vol. i. p. 428. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



391 



Mr. Dawson, and Mr. Johnson ; several younger mini- 
sters being present, as Mr. Priestley, Mr. Wright, Mr. 
Bairstow, Mr. Blamire, and Mr. Eli Dawson. In the 
report of his examination Mr. Heywood says that Mr. 
Cotton seemed to have forgotten his Greek and Hebrew 
by learning other languages, French, Italian, German, 
Dutch, but he had prepared an excellent Latin thesis on 
the question, Quomodo probari potest quod sunt tres 
persons in Trinitate ? Mr. Dawson and Mr. Johnson 
objected ; he answered solidly : he then made his con- 
fession of faith and answered to the questions in the 
Directory. As to the rest, it was in the usual form of 
the Presbyterian ordinations. Mr. Cotton was after- 
wards a minister of great eminence in London and its 
neighbourhood, and he as well as his near relative Dr. 
Samuel Wright were on what was considered the liberal 
and rational side in the great question which was agitated 
among the Non-Conformists respecting subscription to 
the Trinity in 1719. 

1697- 

February 17- This day Mr. Heywood received an in- 
vitation from a congregation in London to succeed Dr. 
Annesley in the pastorship. This he very wisely, at his 
time of life, declined. Some notes which he made in re- 
lation to this proposal afford us an insight into his pe- 
cuniary circumstances and his ministerial position gene- 
rally at this period. He says, that his income from his 
chapel was little more than twenty pounds a-year ; that 
several of his former congregation had left him and gone 
to the new chapel at Halifax ; that however he had many 
hundreds of people at his chapel every Lord's day, and 
that the twelve or fourteen families who formed the 
whole villagery of Northowram , almost all came to hear 
him. In respect of his family affairs, his son John Hey- 
wood had lately taken to wife Mrs. Elizabeth Stacy e 
of Ballifleld, near Sheffield, " a spiritual child of Mr. 
Timothy Jollie," who had a fortune of 400/., and he 



392 



THE LIFE OF 



had settled upon them the half of his estate at Little 
Lever. 

In a letter written on March 16 to his younger son, 
he says, in allusion to this invitation, " I need not re- 
move to greater places for worldly income ; I have as 
much as I desire, more than I expected, and contrary to 
what I have deserved : let mine and others learn to trust 
God in the way of duty, by my example. God hath 
given me an agreeable wife, a pleasant habitation, a 
competent income, an affectionate people, health of body 
and a contented mind. Oh ! who am I, that He hath 
brought me hitherto * ?" 

Yet there are some remarks made by him about the 
same time of a different complexion. Mary Lady Armine, 
a daughter of Henry Talbot, Esq., a younger brother of 
Gilbert Earl of Shrewsbury, a very religious and bene- 
volent lady, had bequeathed certain sums of money to 
be distributed among poor ministers in the counties of 
Huntingdon, Derby, and York, where her estates lay. 
Mr. Stretton, the active and benevolent minister, of 
whom we have before spoken, had the chief management 
of the distribution, and the money for Yorkshire passed 
through the hands of his friend Ralph Thoresby of 
Leeds. Thoresby employed Mr. Heywood to make the 
special distribution of this money, and also of other mo- 
nies from a fund established by the merchants of London 
for the benefit of poor ministers. After some details of 
the distribution he remarks, " All this and much more 
is given to other ministers, and not one penny to me ; 
and, indeed, it is not because they denied me, but be- 
cause I have not asked anything ; yet I am apt to think 
scarce any of these ministers but they receive more of 
their people than I do." It appears, from further re- 
marks on this subject, that, beside the twenty pounds 
a-year from his chapel, Lord Wharton, who was lately 
dead, had been accustomed to allow him two pounds 
a-year, and Lady Hewley commonly gave him five 
* Works, vol. u p. 427. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



393 



pounds a-year. When he travelled he had frequent pre- 
sents from the persons at whose houses he preached. 
He received presents also for funeral sermons. His pri- 
vate estate consisted of fourteen pounds a-year from his 
Lancashire property, seven pounds a-year from lands at 
Sowerby, and rather more from lands in Holdworth. 
On the other hand, he had one of the duties of the pri- 
mitive bishops to discharge, the maintaining hospitality ; 
entertaining many persons at his house every Lord's day, 
but especially on the days when the Lord's Supper was 
administered, which was every eighth Sunday. He had 
then usually twenty persons at his table, besides forty 
or fifty who were served with bread and broth and beer 
in the kitchen. A liberal man he was in everything, and 
such a man ought not to have had the least reason to 
complain ; he had also too noble a mind to stoop to so- 
licitation. It is however to be remembered, that at the 
period of which we are speaking the . demands were very 
large upon the resources of all who bore the dissenting 
name ; and those ministers of whom he speaks might 
really have required it more. 

In March he was employed in writing a preface to a 
treatise of Mr. Frankland's written against a Socinian, 
a " scoffing adversary," as Mr. Frankland calls him in a 
letter which accompanied the manuscript, which letter 
is now among Thoresby's ' Autographs of Divines' in 
the British Museum. The work was printed, but I have 
never seen it ; nor is Mr. Heywood's preface included 
in the collection of his works. 

In the summer of this year he was in frequent cor- 
respondence with Thoresby, the inquisitive antiquary of 
Leeds, communicating with him on the subject of the 
funds for the relief of poor ministers, on the state of 
the Non-Conformist body, and on the lives of ministers 
who had been fellow-sufferers with himself under the 
Act of Uniformity. The Thoresbys had been among the 
most zealous of the Leeds Non-Conformists, and a mind 
of deeper piety than that of the antiquary of the family 



394 



THE LIFE OF 



has rarely been formed. Thoresby however, partly through 
having been led to feel some of the evils which attend 
the good in separation from the Church by what he 
thought undue assumption in the minister, Mr. Manlove, 
who was then at the chapel at Mill-hill, and partly per- 
haps owing to the influence of the peculiar studies to 
which he was from his youth strongly inclined, in dis- 
posing the mind to view the Old Paths more favourably 
perhaps than they deserve, was coming to the resolution 
of returning to the Church. It was even rumoured that 
he was intending to qualify under the Corporation Act, 
that he might become a member of the Corporation of 
Leeds. In reference to this rumour Mr. Hey wood 
wrote to him, on the 7th of August, thus : — " If you be 
Alderman and Mayor of Leeds, I hope you '11 not for- 
sake your old friends, or forget that concern you have 
espoused. I am not able to advise you • but be sure you 
keep faith and a good conscience ; act by Scripture rules, 
walk uprightly, maintain communion with God and his 
people, and aim at God's glory ; and God Almighty 
bless you and yours." Thoresby was a truly good and 
conscientious man, and his heart would approve the free- 
dom of an old friend for whom he entertained a high 
esteem # . 

On the 12th of August Mr. Heywood was engaged in 
the ordination of Mr. Jonas Blamire, a native of Halifax, 
educated under Mr. Frankland, and then settled at Dur- 
ham. The ordination was in the chapel at Halifax, and 
Mr. Heywood, Mr. Priestley, Mr. Smith and Mr. Wright 
were the ordaining ministers. His thesis was on a deep 
point of divinity — An idiomata unius natures in Christo 

* Much respecting Thoresby's conformity in this year may be 
seen in his 'Diary and Correspondence,' It was a subject of long 
reflection, and at last the question was brought to this point — 
Whether matters indifferent in their own nature become not neces- 
sary as to our obedience to them, when commanded by lawful 
authority ? — See Diary and Correspondence, 8vo, 1830, vol. i. p. 326. 
Thoresby's conformity was not a step taken by him but after a great 
deal of reflection and reading. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



395 



toti person/s vere possint attribui, etiamsi alteri naturce 
sunt incommunicabilia ? He made a learned confession 
of faith. 

August 29. "Sunday: Morning I sought God for 
the important work of that day, which was to dedicate 
the new meeting-place at West-gate End in Wakefield ; 
went thither ; we found it full betimes ; I read Exodus xx.; 
prayed; preached on Jeremiah ii. 4, to a vast number; 
dined at William Lawton's ; rid to Mr. Samuel Wads- 
worth's ; lodged there." This was the chapel built for 
the congregation that had been accustomed to meet at 
Alverthorpe, a village a mile or more distant from the 
town where most of the congregation lived. 

September 12. "It was quarter-day; four pounds 
twelve shillings were brought to the table ; it's enough ; 
blessed be God!" 

September 26, he preached at the chapel at Elland 
to a full assembly. This place is in the parish of Halifax, 
and the chapel had arisen chiefly by the exertions of the 
family of Brooksbank, who resided there, and liberally 
endowed it and a school connected with it. 

December 18. " Had three letters out of Lancashire, 
whereby I understood my mother-in-law's death." He 
means, I believe, the second wife of his father ; and this 
is almost the only notice of her in his remains. 

In this year he published his funeral discourse entitled 
' Heavenly Converse.' 

1698. 

May 26. " Spent some time in prayer for the so- 
lemnity at Rathmel, where I should have been." It was 
an ordination, when nine young ministers who had 
been educated under Mr. Frankland # were ordained by 
him and Mr. Carrington, Mr. Aldred, Mr. Gamaliel 
Jones, Mr. Kershaw, Mr. Mitchel, Mr. Benson, Mr. 
Joseph Heywood, and Mr. Anderton. Mr. Heywood 

* Namely, Mr. Bowes, Mr. Taylor, Mr. John Jollie, Mr. Travis, 
Mr. Worthington, Mr. Dickenson, Mr. Vaughs, Mr. Taylor, junior, 
and Mr. Peters. 



396 



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observes incidentally, that Mr. Frankland had at that 
time fifty scholars. Mr. Jollie's academy at Attercliffe 
was also at that time in celebrity. 

Mr. Frankland was then, and for some time pre- 
ceding, in infirm health, and on the first of October he 
died. Mrs. Frankland was desirous that a full account 
of his life should be published together with the sermon 
preached on occasion of his decease. Mr. John Owen, 
who had assisted Mr. Frankland in the academy, wrote 
to Mr. Whitaker of Leeds, one of Mr. Frankland's ear- 
liest pupils, requesting him to contribute what informa- 
tion he could give respecting his former tutor, and also 
respecting his son, Mr. Richard Frankland, who had 
died when just arrived at manhood. Mr. Heywood was 
also applied to, and he writes in his Diary, on October 
10, that he spent most part of the day in writing Mr. 
Frankland's life. No such work appears however to 
have been published. 

At this period he was much employed in committing 
to paper his reminiscences of his friends in the ministry, 
particularly those of Lancashire, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Pen- 
dlebury, Mr. Newcome, Mr. Seddon, and Mr. Lever. 
There is reason to think that the greater part of the 
accounts given of the ministers in Lancashire and York- 
shire by Dr. Calamy may be traced to their origin in the 
notes of Mr. Heywood. 

But his labours of this kind were not confined to the 
biography of particular ministers. Under July 19 he 
writes, " Set myself to answer Mr. Stretton's proposal 
from London to give him an account of our meetings 
of ministers, the state of our congregations. I writ 
almost a sheet of paper and in a letter to Mr. Jollie, 
whom he designates as " the only brother in this world 
of the old stock left to him," dated October 21, he says 
that he has written a large account of nineteen congre- 
gations in our parts, but doubts whether it will be pos- 
sible to maintain quarterly correspondence in our large 
county, or send up delegates to London. He thinks it 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



397 



however fit to do anything they can to propagate the 
Gospel and reformation, yea and reunion; "though, 
alas ! we can do little to cool and qualify the heats in 
the great metropolis, which bode ill to the land. Of old, 
British contests brought on Saxon conquests. Alas ! 
that good men should misconstrue and mistake each 
other ! Tantcene animis coelestibus ires ? Will there be 
anger or shame at ourselves for it in heaven ?" He 
alludes to the doctrinal disputes between the Presbyte- 
rians and Independents in London, which had broken 
up the union of 1692. 

November 22. "Designed to begin a great work, of 
writing my farewell sermons." 

November 29. "Letter from Manchester; strange 
news of Mr. Chorlton's assistant running away # ." 

In this year he published his Discourse entitled 6 The 
General Assembly, or a Discourse of the Gathering of 
all Saints to Christ;' which arose, he tells us, out of 
his musings on the " great number of believers who had 

* This is a remarkable incident in the early history of one of the 
principal congregations of Non- Conforming Presbyterians in Lan- 
cashire, that which now assembles at the chapel in Cross Street, 
Manchester. It shows how hastily and inconsiderately they pro- 
ceeded in the choice of a minister to be joined w T ith Mr. Chorlton, 
when Mr. Heywood had declined the proposal made to him. The 
person chosen was an entire stranger, of whose origin, education, 
and previous habits and character they knew nothing, and who was 
then passing under a name which there was reason found afterwards 
to believe did not belong to him. He was however a man of much 
learning, address, and eloquence. After remaining with them about 
a year he suddenly disappeared, taking with him a horse which be- 
longed to Mr. Greaves, one of the congregation ; and nothing would 
probably have been at this time known of him had he not happened 
to visit Hull, where lived at that time Mr. Abraham De la Pryme, 
a clergyman, who was a man of much curiosity and diligence in re- 
cording what he heard and knew that was remarkable. In this per- 
son's Ephemeris I found the above particulars and something more. 
He called himself at Hull Mr. Midgely, and represented himself as 
being with his brother, Dr. Midgely, the author of the ' Turkish 
Spy.' While at Manchester he had been called Mr. Gaskeld. He 
passed from Hull to Holland. De la Pryme persuaded himself that 
he was a Jesuit in disguise. 



398 



THE LIFE OF 



breathed their last, ministers and Christians, formerly 
and lately, known and unknown, whom I shall now 
never see in this world." How suitable a subject for a 
minister's thoughts, himself approaching the period when 
he also should be joined to the great multitude ! 

In this year also he prepared for the press a treatise 
left by his intimate friend Mr. Sharp, the minister at 
Leeds, who died in 1693. It is entitled 'Divine Com- 
forts antidoting inward Perplexities of Mind,' the only 
printed work of Mr. Sharp, who was an excellent preacher 
and greatly esteeemed by his friends, and by none more 
than by Thoresby, who has left a very affecting account 
of his last moments. Mr. Heywood wrote the Life of 
Mr. Sharp which is prefixed to the work. He was in 
correspondence on this business with the brother of 
Mr. Sharp, Abraham Sharp, a well-known name in 
science. 

1699. 

January 19. Mr. Heywood preached at the funeral 
of a daughter of Mr. Matthew Smith, the minister at 
Mixenden, who was buried at the chapel there ; one of 
the first notices I have observed of interments at the 
newly-erected meeting-houses # . 

January 23. " Writ a letter to Mr. Sylvester of Shef- 
field." He does not say on what subject ; and I intro- 
duce the quotation merely for the purpose of showing that 
Mr. Heywood was known to this good man, who was a 
principal person among the Non-Conformists of Shef- 
field, and who, in the year 1700, laid the first stone of 
the building now called the Upper Chapel, in which 
Mr. Timothy Jollie was the first minister f. 

* This Mr. Smith, the first of the early ministers who defended a 
more rational Christianity, was the father of Mr. Smith who was 
minister at Bradford, and grandfather of another Mr. Smith who 
was the minister at Selby, and is now (1842) living, a minister 

Emeritus. 

f He mentions this fact in his will, desiring to be buried near the 
place. His grave-stone still remains, having the following inscrip- 
tion : — " Field Sylvester, son of Joshua and Judith Sylvester of 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



399 



January 31. He was employed in making catalogues 
of ministers ; and he particularly remarks, that he had 
ascertained that not fewer than twenty-two young mini- 
sters who had been educated under Mr. Frankland were 
then dead. 

May 24. He was engaged with two Mr. Dawsons, 
senior and junior, in the ordination of three other mi- 
nisters, Mr. Benson, Mr. Bairstow, and Mr. Denton, at 
the chapel at Warley . 

October 15. " Timothy Bancroft and Jonathan Priest- 
ley had some discourse about Mr. Smith's principles : I 
interposed a little." Mr. Smith had written a long ex- 
planatory letter to Mr. Hey wood ; and there was soon 
after a paper circulated among his neighbours contain- 
ing a statement of his peculiarities. It was not till the 
next year that Mr. Smith's publications appeared, in 
which they are stated and defended. 

December 5. ' 4 Understanding by my son Eliezer's 
letter that he, his brother, and Mr. Timothy Jollie were 
to keep a private fast this day at Mr. Rotherham's of 
Dronheld about my son Eliezer marrying his daughter, 
I resolved to spend part of the day alone in this work." 
The marriage, which was brought about by Mrs. Taylor 
of Walling- wells, with whom Mr. E. Heywood still con- 
tinued to reside in the character of chaplain, was soon 
after celebrated. 

The dedication to his ' Nephews and others of his 
Natural Relations in Lancashire,' prefixed to his treatise 
entitled ' The Two Worlds, Present and Future, Visible 
and Invisible,' is dated December 30, 1699. 

1700. 

In this year Mr. Heywood's health was fast giving 

Mansfield, born May 11, 1654 ; expired May 10, 1717. ' He that 
hath mercy on the poor, happy is he,' Prov. xiv. 21." His only 
daughter was the wife of Mr. John Wadsworth, who succeeded Mr. 
Jollie, and mother of Mr. Field Sylvester Wadsworth, successor to 
his father, who with Mr. Haynes, his colleague, had taken up what 
were considered by the other ministers heretical notions before the 
middle of the last century. 



400 



THE LIFE OF 



way, and we have very few incidents to relate. Yet his 
care of the dissenting churches appears in the attention 
which he paid to a great dispute which had arisen be- 
tween the Craven congregation and Mr. Kirshaw their 
minister ; on which occasion he wrote the letter to Mr. 
Jollie, which is engraved in fac-simile in the edition of 
the Works of Mr. Heywood. He speaks with great 
concern of this and other differences which had arisen 
even thus early in the Non-Conforming body, and ex- 
presses his sorrow if " Dr. Stillingfleet should be a true 
prophet, ' Let the Dissenters alone, and they will destroy 
themselves.'" — " Tf my ink, or breath or blood would 
afford a plaister, I should rejoice." He knew not what 
to advise. The Dissenters had begun without making 
provision for cases such as those. 

Another thing which in this year deeply interested 
him and disturbed his quiet was, the publication by Mr. 
Smith of a volume in which he explained the new views 
which he took of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. 
He entitled it, ' The True Notion of Imputed Righteous- 
ness, and our Justification thereby ; being a supply of 
what is lacking in the late book of that most learned 
person Bishop Stillingfleet,' &c. ; and it was followed in 
the same year by ' A Defence of the foregoing Doctrine 
against some growing Opposition among Neighbours ; 
Ministers, and others.' This appears to have been the 
first promulgation from the press of opinions deemed 
heretical, by a Yorkshire Non-Conforming minister. Mr. 
Smith had been ordained to the ministry by Mr. Hey- 
wood himself. The book excited alarm and concern. 
Mr. Heywood, on the 21st of December, wrote thus to 
Mr. Jollie: — "We have another breach made in our 
parts by Mr. Matthew Smith, preaching, and printing a 
book against the imputation of Christ's righteousness for 
justification, that Articulus stantis aut cadentis Ecclesite, 
as Luther calls it. I am much concerned about it ; be- 
cause it diverts people from the main practical things to 
endless disputes ; besides the perniciousness of the doc- 
trine. I have charity for him, though [some] men have 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



401 



not ; and others admire him. I bless the Lord we have 
peace among our people." Had Mr. Heywood lived 
twenty years longer he would have seen still wider de- 
partures from what he deemed the truth, in the Non- 
Conforming ministry, for which a preparation was now 
being laid. 

1701. 

Another year of declining health and diminished 
power of exertion. But we find him still intent on his 
Master's work, and delighting himself in his frequent 
private devotions. He is still discomposed about Mr. 
Kirshaw's disputes in Craven and Mr. Smith's want of 
orthodoxy # . Mr. Timothy Jollie, without having seen 
the book, attributed it to the want of proper humility in 
Mr. Smith, and writes thus to Mr. Heywood concerning 
it: — "I do heartily condole with you in the appre- 
hension the common adversary will gain by these efforts ; 
but I trust the faith of the martyrs and glorious re- 
formers will not be abandoned to novellists." The 
spirit however of free inquiry which had manifested 
itself in the Puritan body in earlier times, when it touched 
only petty matters and brought them to the test of 
Scripture, was now beginning to take a wider range, and 
to comprehend within its reach far higher subjects, and 
was not to be checked by appeals to ancestry and the 
opinions of ancient or later martyrs. 

Another subject of disquietude arose out of the affairs 
of the congregation at Bingley. 

December 11, " Set myself to write a letter to Mr. 
Lister, in answer to his concerning that great dispute of 
his removing from Bingley." Without principles, rules, 
or government, it is greatly to the credit of the Non- 
Conforming body that not more clashings have occurred 

* Mr. Smith was, as we have seen, one of the first of those who 
entered the Non-Conforming ministry after the time of the eject- 
ment. He was a native of York, and educated by Mr. Ralph Ward, 
the minister particularly patronized by Lady Hewley, and whose 
daughter was the wife of Dr. Colton. 

2 D 



402 



THE LIFE OF 



in the congregations during the hundred and fifty years 
of their existence. 

Of the state of his health at the beginning of the year 
he writes cheerfully thus : — " I bless God we are in to- 
lerable health ; short-windedness in walking is my only 
malady ; I can study as long and preach as loud as 
formerly." Again, in June, " My asthmatic fits afflict 
me, and constant shortness of breathing ; but I am stu- 
dying-sound, preaching-sound, though not walking- nor 
riding-sound. My last and best journey will be to the 
up-hill city, where I long to be ; but am content to tarry 
God's time and do his work." These expressions occur 
in a letter to one of his sons # , in which he thus draws 
in a few words what was really a great part of his cha- 
racter as a minister: — "Mr. Noble thinks of printing 
his other piece upon the Apocalypse ; but nullus sum in 
propheticis, et puer in dogmaticis, et nolens in polemicist 
sed volens in practicis ; senectute jam gravidus." 

In the winter he was unable to walk even the short 
distance to his chapel. His people provided him a chair. 
December 5, " John Learoyd and Joshua Stocks carried 
me in my new chair to the chapel." 

In this year he published his last work, 'Christ's 
Intercession.' 

1702. 

We have now reached the concluding year of the 
good man's life ; and we find him, beside his public 
and private devotional offices, chiefly employing himself 
in recollecting the friends of his youth and those who 
had been his companions in his trials and adversities. 

January 10, " John Clay came, having dispatched his 
writing Yorkshire and Lancashire ministers." January 
12, " I set upon reading and correcting all the lives of 
Lancashire ministers, to be sent with the Yorkshire 
ones to London ; they took up much time, labour. Writ 
a letter to go with them by the carrier." January 19, 



* Works, vol. i. p. 429. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



403 



" I set myself to write to Mr. Thoresby at Leeds, and 
sent him some lives." January 26, £< I writ a letter to 
Mr. Priestley concerning Mr. Frankland's rife." 

He was still tormented with Mr. Smith's heresies. 
February I, " Spoke to Warley people ; they refused to 
dismiss Mr. Smith." February' 15, " Talked about Mr. 
Smith's remove to Bingley." February 17, " About 
one o'clock came Mr. Dawson, Mr. Priestley, Mr. B air- 
stow, to consult about Mr. Smith's staying at Warley 
or removing to Bingley ; we framed a paper, subscribed 
our hands to it." The ministers must have perceived 
that irregular tribunals like this were but an indifferent 
substitute for courts which administered ecclesiastical af- 
fairs according to law and precedent. On the 1st of 
March, " Warley people dined with me; told me Mr. 
Smith would not leave them after all this hurry." 

For the few weeks which remain I shall make my ex- 
tracts from his Diary more abundant ; they will show 
the frame of his spirit as he drew towards his end. 

March 10, "John Priestley called ; told me sad tidings 
of King William's death. 11, Jeremiah Baxter came, 
and said the news of King William's death was not true, 
but he was much out of order. 12, I sought God ; 
after family prayer I w T ent into my chamber ; designed 
to spend that forenoon in prayer ; began at nine o'clock, 
sought God, confessed my sins ; was helped about an 
hour, having read Psalm xxxviii. ; then read xlii. Psalm ; 
prayed for my wife, children, relations, congregation ; 
then read a chapter ; pleaded with God for king, king- 
dom, Church, but was dull, distracted. After dinner old 
Jonathan Priestley came with the sad certain news of 
King William's death ; I went to my study ; prayed. 
13, I sought God; had mercy; set myself to write 
reflections on the sad news of King William's death. 
15, Sunday, which was the day of my baptizing at 
Bolton seventy- two years ago, T set out to my chapel ; 
prayed; preached on 1 Peter iii. 21, about answering 
baptism ; God helped in twelve several cases • we had 

2 d 2 



404 



THE LIFE OF 



nine or ten at dinner ; Jonathan Priestley, his son Jona- 
than ; stayed after ; God helped. 18, Jeremiah Baxter 
came, and told me John Lambert, Esq. was to be buried 
this day. 22, Went to my chapel on men's shoulders. 
29, I waited on God, as I was able ; was carried to my 
chapel ; prayed ; preached on Mark xvi. 1 7 ; God helped ; 
administered the Lord's Supper, but was weary with 
walking ; got J. P. to serve the rest ; had help in the 
afternoon ; we had many at dinner." 

April 3, " Enoch Halstead came ; brought me a letter 
from Sir Charles Hoghton. 12, Mr. Nathaniel Priest- 
ley offered his service to preach for me all day, for he 
said Mr. William Perkins, that married Alice Mitchel 
that week, would preach for him at Halifax. He did pray 
and preach all day very well. 16, My son John and I 
went into my chamber, spent some time in prayer before 
family prayer ; he prayed then ; I went to my study ; 
was called down to Mr. Hartley, preacher at Luddenden, 
come to visit me ; once our schoolmaster ; stayed 
awhile, then went away ; I fell to my writing work 
after dinner; had assistance." 19, Sunday, "I had 
slept little, taking thought about my work ; but when I 
was carried to my chapel and standing two hours in ex- 
pounding Job ix., praying, preaching from 2 Tim. ii. 19, 
I was helped forenoon and after beyond expectation : 
blessed be God!" — All this week he was very ill ; his 
complaint was asthma, the disease of ministers. 26, 
Sunday, " I was little fit for the work of that day, yet 
made a venture ; read Job xiv. ; did pray, but was 
straitened ; preached on 2 Tim. ii. 19 ; finished it ; had 
several dined with us ; finished that text ; Jonathan 
Bancroft prayed with us at noon ; some came in at 
night ; I was very weary." All the rest I shall transcribe : 
— " Monday morning, April 27, I was ill; had much 
ado to get into my chamber • came down, kept down all 
day ; began to write, but was not able ; Mr. Wright 
came ; Mr. Bairstow came ; went to prayer with me ; 
old William Walker ; I sent for Jonathan Priestley ; his 



OLIVER HEYVVOOD. 



405 



father and he came both ; discoursed ; took my will to 
copy it ; we discoursed many things ; I was something 
better in the afternoon : blessed be God. Tuesday morn- 
ing, 28, I. was not able to go up into my chamber; 
prayed below ; had company ; came Jonathan Priestley, 
John Holdworth, Samuel Drake, John Learoyd, to seal 
my will ; was a little assisted in afternoon in the par- 
lour ; Samuel Holdworth came. Wednesday morning, 
29, I had help to get up, and my wife left me in the par- 
lour ; we went to family prayer ; God helped ; I had 
many visitors ; William Clay came, went to prayer with 
me; Elizabeth Mary Ramsden, Grace Ramsden, James 
Tetlaw, Anthony Naylor, young Jonathan Priestley, his 
father ; went to prayer with me ; other company. " 

On Monday, the 4th of May, he died. 

He left the place and manner of his interment to the 
discretion of his executor, who was his wife, assisted by 
Mr. Jonathan Priestley as supervisor. They buried him 
in Holdsworth's Works in the church of Halifax, where 
many years before his mother was laid, and where many 
of the early Puritans of that parish had been laid to rest. 
There was a great assembly of friends, ministers, and 
others at his funeral # . 

There is no memorial of him now to be found in that 
church. 

By his will he gave his copyhold lands at Northowram 

* Amongst others was Ralph Thoresby, who came accompanied 
by Mr. Peters, the minister at Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds. " May 7, 
rode with Mr. Peters to Northowram to the funeral of good old Mr. 
O. Hey wood. He was interred with great lamentations in the pa- 
rish church at Halifax ; was surprised at the following arvill, or treat 
of cold possets, stewed prunes, cake and cheese, prepared for the 
company, where had several Con. and Non-Con. ministers and old 
acquaintance." 

Feasts at funerals were an ancient custom of England, and then 
common in the north, and the practice is not now wholly discon- 
tinued. There substantial food is often provided. Mr. Heywood 
remarks, as a deviation from the usual practice of the people of Ha- 
lifax, that at the funeral of Mrs. Briggs of Boys-town, July 3, 1673, 
the persons invited had " nothing but a bit of cake, draught of wine, 
piece of rosemary, and pair of gloves." 



406 



THE LIFE OF 



to his wife for life, with remainder to his youngest son ; 
his other lands in Yorkshire to her for life, with re- 
mainder to his grandson Timothy, the son of John. A 
mortgage on a house in Ovenden he gave to his wife. 
His lands at Little Lever and elsewhere in Lancashire to 
his eldest son. He gave to his wife certain books, plate, 
his watch, and his "picture hanging in the parlour." 
His other books and his manuscripts he directs shall be 
divided equally between his two sons. He gave a small 
legacy to Susanna Tillotson, an old servant. 

The portrait here spoken of, of w T hich there is an ex- 
cellent engraving prefixed to the edition of his works, 
represents him in his preaching dress, a gown and small 
band, with the black cap of the old Puritan over a pro- 
fusion of natural locks. He holds a small bible in his 
hand. In his countenance there is an expression of 
great good-humour, and the whole figure does not give 
the impression of his being at all attenuated by his severe 
fastings and labours. 

His widow survived him till the year 1707. 

The house in which he lived still exists, with the initial 
letters of his name and the word " Ebenezer," and the 
date 1677 carved on a stone over the door. But it has 
been divided into two or more small tenements. The 
people who inhabit it have an obscure tradition that it 
was once the abode of a persecuted minister who preached 
in the night to an assembly outside from a window in the 
back part of the house. 

The chapel w T hich he erected was standing, little 
changed, till 1836; in which year it was taken down, 
and a much larger chapel erected on a site not far re- 
moved, which bears on its front the inscription, " Hey- 
wood Chapel." 

In the old chapel were several memorials of other mi- 
nisters, but none of Mr. Hey wood, the founder, except 
the cypher before mentioned over the door. 

His successor in the ministry at Northowram was Mr. 
Thomas Dickenson, a man not unlike Mr. Hey wood, 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



407 



who had previously been minister at the chapel at Gor- 
ton, near Manchester. He was more than forty years 
the minister at Northowram, and at his death was suc- 
ceeded by Mr. Robert Hesketh, who died in 1774. 
Times had then greatly changed with the regular Pres- 
byterian ministry, and rural Presbyterianism had be- 
come greatly reduced in the number of congregations 
and the number of persons composing them. North- 
owram has since had ministers belonging to the Inde- 
pendent denomination. I passed through the village on 
a week-day evening in August 1822, when Mr. White, 
one of them, was addressing at the communion table a 
small body of his congregation, who appeared deeply at- 
tentive and interested in his discourse. It was like the 
older times of Non-Conformity. 

Of the ejected ministers who had acted with him, Mr. 
Hey wood left surviving Mr. Jollie, who died in 1703, 
Mr. Johnson, who died in 1707 # , Mr. Prime, who died 
in 1708, and Mr. Dawson, who died in 1709. Mr. 
Jonas Waterhouse, who had been ejected at Bradford, 
outlived all these, but he does not seem to have been 
much concerned in the proceedings of the northern Non- 
Conformists. 

Of Mr. Hey wood's two sons, John survived his father 
little more than two years, dying in 1704, being then the 
minister at Pontefract, leaving a son, who died early in 
life without issue. Eliezer left Walling- wells and went 
to reside at Dronfield, where his wife's family lived, and 
had there a small rural congregation, to whom he mini- 
stered till his death in 1730. He left a son of his own 
name who was also a minister to the Presbyterian con- 
gregation at Mansfield, where he died in 1783. Mr. 

* It is remarkable how little is said of Mr. Johnson by Dr. Calamy. 
The inscription on his tomb in the churchyard of Sandal near Wake- 
field will supply some further particulars : — " Hie jacet corpus Thomse 
Johnson de Painsthorp, olim de Collegio Divi Johannis in Academia 
Cantabrigiensi, Artium Magistri ; qui Naturae debitum solvit 14° die 
Julii anno dom. 1707, aetatis suae 78." 



408 



THE LIFE OF 



Hey wood of Mansfield left three sons, the eldest of whom, 
Mr. Samuel Hey wood, a solicitor at Nottingham, died at 
the age of thirty-four in 1789. His only son left no 
male issue. One of the younger sons of Mr. Hey wood 
of Mansfield died in 1841, leaving a son. 

The posterity of Mr. Nathaniel Hey wood, the brother 
of Mr. Heywood, are to be traced only through his 
grandson Benjamin Heywood, who settled at Drogheda. 
He had three sons, Arthur, Benjamin, and Nathaniel, 
who all returned to England, and were the founders of 
families still existing. 

1. Arthur settled at Liverpool, where he died in 1795. 
His first wife brought him an only daughter, the grand- 
mother of the present Lord Ashtown ; but by his second 
wife, who was a daughter of Mr. Richard Milnes of 
Wakefield, a principal member of a distinguished Non- 
Conforming family in that town, he had four sons, two 
of whom were settled at Liverpool and two at Wakefield. 
Neither of the Liverpool gentlemen left issue ; but Ben- 
jamin Heywood of Wakefield and Stanley-hall left a son, 
Arthur Heywood, Esq., the eldest male descendant of the 
first Nathaniel. John Pemberton, the other son of Ar- 
thur, was an eminent barrister on the Northern Circuit, 
lately dead, leaving a son, Peter Heywood, Esq., and 
many other children. 

2. Benjamin : he also settled at Liverpool, where he 
died in 1795. He had three sons, of whom the eldest 
was Samuel Heywood, Esq., serjeant-at-law, and one of 
the Welsh judges. He left no son. Benjamin Arthur 
Heywood, another son, died unmarried ; so that the issue 
of Nathaniel, who married a daughter of Dr. Thomas 
Percival, the eminent physician at Manchester, became 
the only representatives of this branch. The eldest son, 
Benjamin Heywood, Esq., of Claremont, near Manches- 
ter, was some time member of parliament for the county 
of Lancaster, and was created a baronet in 1838. He 
has a numerous issue. Of the other surviving sons, 
Thomas, Richard, and James, two of them have issue. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



409 



3. Nathaniel : he entered the army, and rose to the 
rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was gentleman of the 
bedchamber to the Duke of Gloucester, brother to King 
George the Third. His descendants are settled in 
Hampshire. 

Such have been the fortunes of the descendants of the 
two brothers. 

So many biographical accounts of the early ministers 
were printed about this period, and Mr. Heywood had 
himself prepared so many, of which the lives of his 
father-in-law, Mr. Angier, and his brother, Mr. Natha- 
niel Heywood, had been printed, that it is rather matter 
of surprise that neither of his sons prepared any biogra- 
phical account of him out of the abundant materials 
which he had left, and their own intimate knowledge of 
everything concerning him. But in fact there was the 
intention of doing this ; for Mr. John Heywood, writing 
to Thoresby on September 27, 1703, says, " I am doing 
what I can to forward my father's life, but necessary and 
unavoidable occasions retard ; nor do I find it so easy to 
do it to purpose as at first sight it might seem to be." 
In the next year he speaks of his severe indisposition 
taking him off from his design. 

There is a traditionary remembrance of him through 
the whole Non-Conforming body in the West Riding of 
Yorkshire and in Lancashire as of a man of eminent 
piety, great exertion, and uncommon usefulness. Re- 
ference has been occasionally made to him in the writings 
of the Presbyterian ministry of later times, and always 
with great respect. A small volume, containing some 
account of his life by Dr. Fawcett of E wood-hall, was 
twice printed ; and a much larger account, in which the 
materials to which I have been so much indebted were 
employed, was prefixed to a collection of his works, ex- 
tending to five octavo volumes, in the present century. 

With one testimony from a contemporary minister, 
Mr. Tong, who was one of the ministers educated by 
Frankland, I shall conclude the present chapter : — 



410 



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" Surely, when we think of such men as Mr. Bagshaw, 
Mr. Newcome, Mr. Henry, Mr. Heywood, Mr. Thomas 
Jollie, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Spi]sbury, Mr. Cross, &c, 
and consider how fully they followed God, how they 
preached and how they prayed, how they lived and how 
they died, that admonition should sound in our ears, 
' Be not slothful, but followers of those that through 
faith and patience have inherited the promises.' It 
would be sad indeed if the remembrance of their piety, 
humility, candour, undissembled love to one another, 
should only serve to shame and condemn a contrary 
spirit in us that enter into their labours. If we be like 
them, and do like them, God will be with us as he was 
with them ; but if we give way to an envious, proud, 
selfish, vain, contentious spirit, we are told by that ad- 
mirable man, Mr. John Corbet, what will be the con- 
sequence ; either we shall extinguish the light of the 
Gospel, or the light of the Gospel will extinguish us # ." 

* Prefatory Letter to the Short Account of the Life and Character 
of the Rev. W. Bagshaw, p. xxi. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



411 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

NUMBERS OF THE NON- CONFORMISTS. YORKSHIRE CONGREGATIONS. 

PRESBYTERIAN DISSENTERS NOT A SECT NOR A CHURCH. ERECTION 

OF THEIR CHAPELS. TRUSTEES. MODE OF CONDUCTING SERVICE. 

WANT OF RECOGNIZED RULES. ELECTION OF MINISTERS. MEANS 

OF SUPPORT. EMINENT BENEFACTORS : LADY HEWLEY J THE HOL- 

LISES J DR. DANIEL WILLIAMS. ACADEMIES. LEARNING OF THE 

EARLY MINISTERS. ORDINATIONS. MEETINGS OF MINISTERS. THE 

LONDON MINISTERS. ABSENCE OF A CREED. PRINCIPLE OF FREE 

INQUIRY. STATE OF THE RELIGIOUS WORLD AT THE BEGINNING OF 

DISSENT. — DISREGARD OF THE REQUIREMENT OF SUBSCRIPTION BY 

THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY. THEIR WANT OF UNION A MAIN CAUSE 

OF THEIR SUBSEQUENT DECLINE. OTHER CAUSES. CHANGES CON- 
SEQUENT ON THE ASSERTION OF THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 

INTRODUCTION OF ARIANISM. SOCINIAN1SM. MR. LINDSEY. 

DR. PRIESTLEY. RETURNS TO THE CHURCH. GREAT EFFECT OF 

METHODISM. EXTINCTION OF MANY OF THE YORKSHIRE CONGRE- 
GATIONS. THE PRESBYTERIANS STILL AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN 

ENGLISH SOCIETY. 

In the same manner in which we have seen Mr. Hey wood 
spending his life were many other of the Puritan mini- 
sters employed when they found themselves excluded from 
the National Church by the requisitions of the Act of 
Uniformity. It was first, that is, till the year 1687, an 
open defiance of the law by the performance of religious 
rites and the conducting religious services wherever op- 
portunities were presented to them ; and from that period 
to the close of their lives, the acting as pastors and mi- 
nisters of particular communities of men who preferred 
their ministry, or who, for whatever reason, refused to 
conform to the Church, which they were allowed to do 
on certain easy terms prescribed by the Act of Tolera- 
tion. 



412 



THE LIFE OF 



These Non-Conforming communities, which exceeded 
a thousand, and were scattered with almost an equal hand 
through all the dioceses in the kingdom, were arranged 
under the denominations of Presbyterian, Independent, 
and Baptist. Enough has been said in the former parts 
of this work to show whence arose these distinctions and 
the peculiar characteristics of each body. These form 
what are called the Three Denominations ; and under one 
or other of these denominations the tolerated communi- 
ties and pastors ranked themselves, till there arose, about 
half a century later, other dissenting communities in an- 
other schism, and resting on different principles. The 
very extravagant sects which had arisen in the time of 
the Commonwealth had by this time passed away, except 
the Quakers, and they never united themselves with the 
three denominations. They had more extreme opinions 
and more marked peculiarities. In particular they abo- 
lished the Sacraments and the office of minister or pastor. 
Their history, like that of the Baptists, is a distinct chap- 
ter in the Church History of Britain ; but they, as well 
as the Presbyterians and the Independents, are fragments 
of the great Puritan wave, which, rising at the very be- 
ginning of the Reformation, had gradually swelled till it 
had borne down all before it, and was at last broken and 
dispersed, not so much by the determined opposition 
which was presented to it in the reign of Charles the 
Second, as by the milder policy which was adopted at 
the Revolution. 

The following is given as the number of persons in 
England belonging to the three great bodies of Christian 
professors, returned to an Order of Council in January 
1688 : — 

In the province of Canterbury, Conformists, 2, 123,362; 
Non-Conformists, 95,151; Papists, 11,878. 

In the province of York, Conformists, 353,892 ; Non- 
Conformists, 15,525 ; Papists, 1987*. 

* Copied in one of Cole's MSS. at the British Museum, vol. x. 
It makes the Non-Conformists but about one -twenty- fourth of the 
whole population. 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



413 



In the West Riding of Yorkshire, which had been the 
principal scene of Mr. Heywood's labours, the number 
of communities of Non-Conformists each having its own 
pastor, and where the community was large, two pastors, 
was forty at the time when the Toleration Act took them 
under the protection of the law. These were all either 
Presbyterian or Independent, the Baptists not having at 
that period established any permanent and regular con- 
gregation in the county. They were nearly all Presby- 
terian. The congregations at Heckmonwyke and at 
Topcliffe, and the Call Lane congregation at Leeds, were 
the most decidedly Independent in their first origin and 
principles. But in some places there was a union of 
persons of both sentiments, neither being strong enough 
of themselves to form a congregation and support a mi- 
nister. The two parties united at Sheffield, where there 
was a remarkably zealous and able minister, Mr. Jollie ; 
but on his death in 1715 the Independents withdrew 
themselves from the Presbyterians, and erected a second 
chapel for themselves. This was a solitary instance in 
the county of such a course being taken. The two de- 
nominations acted at first together on the terms of the 
agreement ratified at the meeting at Wakefield, till the 
doctrinal questions, which arose some time after, occa- 
sioned a final separation. 

The aptitude of the population of the parish of Halifax 
to receive dissent, of which Dr. Whitaker speaks, appears 
very remarkably in the fact, that of the forty West Riding 
congregations there were seven in that parish alone. It 
may be taken also as some proof of the zeal and success 
of Mr. Hey wood, and the respect paid to him. They 
had chapels at Halifax, Northowram, Mixenden, Warley, 
Eastwood, Sowerby, and Elland # . 

* An eighth congregation is mentioned in a list formed in 1716 
which met at Lightcliffe and had a pastor ; but it was very small, 
and appears to have had no chapel, nor any long continuance. I say 
nothing in the text of four other very small West Riding congrega- 
tions which are named in the list, namely, Rathmel, Garsdale, near 
Sedbergh, Newton in Bolland, and Greenhill, near Ripon. 



414 



THE LIFE OF 



The parish of Leeds presents a remarkable contrast. 
It was as populous as that of Halifax, and the inhabit- 
ants were employed in the same kind of manufactures ; 
but no chapels arose in that parish, except the two in 
the town. 

In the parishes bordering upon Halifax, and where 
Mr. Heywood was personally known and accustomed to 
preach in the dark days of Non-Conformity, there were 
congregations and chapels at the following places :« — 
Bradford, Kipping, Keighley, Idle, Pudsey, Morley, 
Heckmonwyke, Cleck-Heaton, Topcliffe, Hopton, and 
Lidget : half the Yorkshire congregations were amongst 
the hills. 

Further north were congregations at Bingley, Winter- 
burn in Craven, where the Lamberts attended, and in 
Swale-dale, where Lord Wharton prepared a chapel for 
the benefit of his miners. 

There were congregations at York, Selby, Clifford 
near Tadcaster, and Knaresborough. These were more 
particularly under the patronage of Lady Hewley. 

In the district between the Aire and the Wharf no 
congregations appear to have been formed, notwithstand- 
ing the encouragement which was given to the ejected 
ministers by various members of the family of Fairfax, 
and by some other of the considerable families in that 
part of the county. 

The aristocracy in the southern parts of the county, by 
whom Mr. Heywood w T as, as we have seen, frequently 
received at their houses, never founded a chapel, but 
service was for some years conducted at the hall at 
Walling-wells by a Non-Conformist minister. This was 
discontinued early in the succeeding century. The 
Westbys left the county # . The Hatfields and the Sta- 

* Mr. Westby, Mr. Heywood's friend, gave up Ravenfield to his 
son, Wardell George Westby, member for Malton, on his marriage 
with a sister of the Earl of Holderness, and settled at Linton in 
Cambridgeshire, acting as a magistrate for that county. There was 
a small dissenting chapel there which he attended to the time of his 
death in 1747, and he was buried beneath the vestry floor. Cole 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



415 



niforths of Firbeck continued connected with the Non- 
Conformists till the extinction of the two families. The 
Rodes' at Great Houghton had erected, as we have seen, 
a chapel there in the time of the Commonwealth. The 
Riches built a chapel near their residence at Bull-house, 
at which the Non-Conformists of the parish of Peniston 
assembled # . There were chapels and congregations at 
the market-towns of Wakefield, Pontefract, Barnsley, 
Rotherham, and Doncaster ; also at the village of Fish- 
lake in the Levels of Hatfield. And, finally, there were 
congregations at Sheffield and the neighbouring village 
of AtterclifFe f ; and another at Stannington, a wild re- 
gion a few miles north of the town, where a chapel had 
been built and endowed in the time of the Common- 
wealth. 

In 171 6 the whole number of Dissenters in the parish 
of Halifax was estimated by themselves at 2330, of whom 
500 were of the Northowram congregation. At Leeds 

of Milton, who may be believed when he says anything favourable 
of a Non- Conformist, speaks of him thus : — " I think he had been a 
member of parliament in the former part of his life, and was a most 
tediously ceremonious gentleman, but of an exceeding good character 
and very friendly." His son survived him about nine years, and 
with him the family became extinct. 

* The two families of Riche and Rodes were united by the mar- 
riage of Richard Rodes, grandson of Sir Edward, with a daughter 
of Elkana Riche,- son of Sylvanus, mentioned in a former part of this 
work. Her brother, Aymer Riche of Bull-house, died without issue 
in 1769. Their mother was a daughter of Richard Thorpe of Hop- 
ton, the minister so often mentioned by Mr. Heywood. Mr. Riche 
(who was one of Lady Hewley's trustees) left Bull-house and his 
other estates to the issue of Mrs. Rodes, who were two daughters ; 
Mrs. Mary Rodes, who resided at the fine old Elizabethan hall at 
Great Houghton till her death in 1789, and Martha, the wife of 
Hans Busk, Esq. Great. Houghton, Bull-house, and other estates 
descended to the two daughters of Mr. Busk, who married two Mr. 
Milnes' of Wakefield, namely, James Milnes of Thornes-house, Esq., 
and Richard Slater Milnes of Fryston, Esq., both of whom were in 
parliament. Several of the Milnes' have been members of Lady 
Hewley's trust. 

t The chapel in Fullwood, near Sheffield, was not founded till 
1 724, the only instance of the foundation of a chapel by the old dis- 
sent after the first effort. 



416 



THE LIFE OF 



there were 600 persons of the Mill-hill or Presbyterian 
congregation, and 800 of the Call-lane or Independent 
congregation. The Wakefield congregation consisted 
of 400 persons; the Sheffield of 1163, beside the 200 
who had lately withdrawn themselves and built the Ne- 
ther chapel. The Morley congregation consisted of 450 
persons, and the Independents of Heckmonwyke num- 
bered 350. The Topcliffe Independents were only 60. 

In the formation of the Independent congregations 
there was usually more of specialty and solemnity than 
appears to have been the case at the establishment of 
those which were Presbyterian , and an historical register 
was kept of all matters interesting to the congregation, 
such as the election of pastors and the disowning or the 
admission of members ; so that it was known, with as 
much precision as it now is by the Quakers, who were 
members of the body. There was little if anything of 
this at the original setting out of the Presbyterians. The 
ministers received all comers who w T ere disposed to leave 
the Church and place themselves under their pastorship ; 
and though at first it appears to have been the case that 
some kind of permission was obtained from the minister 
before a person not before known was received to the 
Lord's table, yet even this soon fell into disuse, and the 
principle of open communion, as it was called, became 
very generally, if not universally, the principle of the 
Presbyterian congregations, which was in effect, that any 
person might join in the Sacraments, as well as in the 
worship, without any ostensible form of admission, just 
as he might in the National Church. 

This is a remarkable circumstance, inasmuch as it 
shows that the Presbyterians when they became Dis- 
senters did not aim at giving to themselves the character 
of a sect, one of whose chief characteristics it is that the 
edges are clear and defined, so that it is distinctly known 
who are and who are not belonging to it. And the same 
laxity in this respect, which prevailed from the beginning 
in each particular congregation, prevailed through the 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



417 



"whole community, in which it was not, in some cases, 
easy to say whether a congregation were properly of 
Presbyterian origin and principles or no. In fact, the 
object appears to have been from the beginning to ob- 
tain hearers, or persons on whom the ministers could 
work by the unrestricted minstrations, which appeared 
to them more efficient than the services of the Church, 
to the great and good purposes of all religious ministra- 
tions. 

Each of the congregations had its own chapel, except 
in the few instances in which they met in the private 
mansion of some opulent friend to dissent ; and the si- 
multaneous erection of so many buildings devoted to 
this purpose must be regarded as a noble display of 
Christian liberality. The whole work was accomplished 
in less than twenty years. The period between 1687 
and 1700 is the great sera of chapel building among the 
old Dissenters. Humble edifices it is true in most cases 
they were, and on which no further expense was bestowed 
than was requisite to provide a convenient place for 
public prayer, the administration of the Lord's Supper, 
and attendance on the preaching of the Word. The 
latter object had been all along a principal one with the 
Puritans, whose ministers were often styled, as their more 
appropriate designation, "preaching ministers;" and 
their successors, when they appeared in the form of Dis- 
senters, were often by persons who did not like them 
called "Dissenting teachers." It cannot and need not 
be concealed that preaching was placed by them, perhaps 
too much, in advance of the devotional part of the ser- 
vice, and that the idea of places of religious assemblies 
being in any sense temples raised to the honour of the 
Almighty, and the service of each a part of the common 
offering of prayer and praise, was exploded by them. 
This led to the filling the chapels with pews and galle- 
ries, the system introduced at the Reformation, and 
which has nearly destroyed the symmetry and beauty of 
such ecclesiastical edifices as the ill-directed zeal of the 

2 E 



418 



THE LIFE OF 



Reformers suffered to remain out of the many which the 
piety and the pure taste of our remoter ancestors had 
provided for us. In some of the large towns the chapels 
were capacious and substantial edifices. But in this 
point, of the absence of ornament from the chapels 
erected by the old Non-Conformists, which has been 
made matter of reproach against them, it is to be ob- 
served, that it was in part a needful frugality at a time 
when great exertion was required of all who bore the 
dissenting name, and in part a principle. They had 
inherited from their Puritan ancestors a contempt for 
everything external which sought to make the offices of 
religion attractive, believing that there was enough with- 
out it in the internal feeling ; an erroneous principle un- 
doubtedly, but still a principle, and as a principle to be 
respected ; and they further saw that the splendid eccle- 
siastical edifices were, in their view of the matter, haunts 
of superstition and centres of spiritual despotism. 

Besides the pews and galleries, the furniture of the 
chapels consisted of a table for the Lord's Supper and 
a pulpit. No font was placed in them, baptism having 
from the first been regarded more in the light of a do- 
mestic service than to signify and solemnize the admis- 
sion of one who was to be a member of the Christian 
Church, or who was admitted even thus early to the pri- 
vileges which attend on the being members of the Church 
of Christ. Reading-desks are rarely found in the old 
chapels. There was one at York, where probably a bet- 
ter taste prevailed, for it is easy to perceive the incon- 
gruity in offering the prayers of a congregation from a 
place that is elevated and prepared to be the seat of pub- 
lic instruction. 

The chapels were usually places also for the interment 
of the more considerable families in the congregation. 
This appropriation of them came from the Church where 
the edifices appear to have been originally constructed 
with an especial view to this use being made of them. 
It was for this that the porches of the old churches of 



OLIVER HKYWOOD. 



419 



England were crowded with sculptures of the Father, 
and of holy and eminent persons who had finished their 
course and entered into joy, and who were there, not as 
objects of idolatrous worship, but to suggest to the mind 
the hopes and privileges of the Christian. For a general 
burial-place there was usually a piece of ground adjoin- 
ing the chapel. 

The ground on which the chapels were erected was 
commonly purchased. 

The expense of all this was borne in some instances 
by single families, but in general it was by the joint 
effort of the persons who were to compose the congre- 
gations. 

They were usually registered in the manner prescribed 
by the Act of Toleration. 

For their perpetual appropriation to the purposes for 
which they were erected, they were conveyed to a body 
of persons, usually the chief contributors and members 
of the congregation, to be held by them in trust for those 
purposes. As far as I have seen of the original trust- 
deeds of these chapels, there is the same want of uni- 
formity of system, and the same evidence of the want of 
any one common principle, as we find in so many other 
things belonging to Presbyterian dissent. They are most 
commonly said to be " for the worship of God by Pro- 
testant Dissenters." Tt is sometimes added, "of the 
Presbyterian denomination" or " of the Independent de- 
nomination," and sometimes " of the Presbyterian and 
Independent denominations" jointly. After this there 
is a general diversity in important respects ; such as the 
mode in which the pastor shall be chosen ; the removal 
of him, if that is touched upon at all ; the duties of the 
pastor ; the doctrine on which his exhortations shall be 
founded ; the extent of the power of the trustees ; and 
the manner in which vacancies in the trust shall be filled. 
All seems to have been settled according to the particu- 
lar fancy of the members of each particular congregation, 
showing, what many other things show, that the Pres- 

2 e 2 



420 



THE LIFE OF 



byterian Dissenters of England were from the beginning 
a body of persons acting by independent and desultory 
efforts, and not a church or even a sect, words which 
imply union, authority, and laws. 

There has not even been any systematic depositing of 
the trust-deeds, or registration of them, though they are 
now the legal basis on which the possession of much 
valuable property rests. It is believed that when the 
congregations have continued, the vacancies have been 
regularly filled in the manner prescribed. Questions 
have sometimes arisen between congregations and their 
trustees. The great disputes at Sheffield in 1715 in- 
volved the question of the extent of trustee power. 

The public services in these chapels were conducted in 
the manner which had been prescribed by the Directory 
of the Assembly of Divines. The whole of the service 
was left entirely to the taste and discretion of the mini- 
ster. Lessons from the Old Testament and from the 
New were read, not prescribed but selected by the mini- 
ster. An introductory prayer, the general or long prayer, 
and the intercessory prayer at the close, formed the de- 
votional part of the service. Three or four psalms were 
sung, and there was rarely a meeting without a sermon. 
Such a thing as a liturgy is not to be heard of in the 
early days of Non-Conformity ; and when the experiment 
was made in one of the congregations about the year 
1765, an old and influential minister of the time speaks 
of it in these terms : — " They might as well conform at 
once." Indeed the question of free prayer and an esta- 
blished liturgy was one of the principal in the early con- 
troversies which led to dissent, and the use of free prayer 
by the Non-Conformists had much to do in drawing 
persons from the Church. In many congregations for 
free prayer has been substituted the use of written forms 
composed by the minister, a greater change than those 
who introduced it seem to have understood. 

Instrumental music was very sparingly used, and great 
has at times been the contest when a proposal has been 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



421 



made to introduce an organ into one of these places of 
worship. Indeed the unsuitableness of such an instru- 
ment to the general simplicity of these chapels, and the 
worship in them, might be sufficient to exclude them, 
were there no principle intervening. It was a principle 
inherited by the Puritans from the first reformers, who, 
amongst their other spoliations on the national taste, 
ruined our music. There were various collections of 
psalms and hymns ; but the use of those by Dr. Watts, 
one of the early ministers, soon became general, who has 
hardly, till the late revival of a purer taste in poetry, 
been surpassed in this department. 

Beside his two services on the Sunday, the minister 
had often to deliver a lecture, which was only another 
expression for conducting a religious service, on some 
day or evening in the middle of the week, and to cate- 
chise the children, and perform such other duties as fall 
to the lot of the public pastor. 

In some congregations were persons, varying in num- 
ber from two to six, called deacons, whose office was 
very undefined. Practically everything was vested in the 
minister or pastor, and the control over him by the 
congregation was not any constitutional power, but only 
that which resulted from the pleasure vested in them of 
continuing or withholding their contributions. The re- 
lation of minister and people in such communities is a 
very delicate one, and it cannot be but that difference of 
opinion will sometimes arise ; yet when this was the case, 
neither minister nor people had ever anything to which 
to refer as containing an authoritative statement of the 
rights and duties of either party. This is a further proof 
of the want of care and foresight and union with which 
the Presbyterian Dissenters set out. Even the stability 
of the minister's right to the office, and the emoluments 
belonging to it, is not very well ascertained; that is, there 
is nothing to show what would vitiate the agreement by 
which he entered into possession. The understanding, 
for it was nothing more, appears from the beginning to 



422 



THE LIFE OF 



have been, that once regularly appointed, he could only- 
he deprived on some charge of immorality being sub- 
stantiated against him. The remedy which the congre- 
gation possessed in ordinary cases of neglect of duty was 
the withdrawing themselves and their subscriptions. We 
have seen in the case of Mr. Kirshaw, in which Mr. Hey- 
wood interested himself, that there were difficulties of 
this kind at the very beginning. 

The election of the minister was vested usually in the 
congregation, but sometimes in the trustees. It was 
soon found that the word congregation by no means de- 
fines with sufficient accuracy the parties who are to make 
the election, and the interpretation of the word has been 
various. Sometimes it has been taken to mean all per- 
sons whatsoever who customarily attended the chapel ; 
sometimes the persons only who had been accustomed 
to subscribe ; sometimes, when the system of letting the 
pews at a certain sum assessed on each was introduced, 
the seat-holders only. In the Independent congregations 
the regularly admitted members of the Church had alone 
the choice, and this was with them a principle. Prin- 
ciple here the Presbyterians had none. It might have 
been presupposed that this unsettled state of things would 
lead to dissensions, and so undoubtedly it sometimes has 
done ; but, practically, the system of popular election, 
even with the additional circumstance of no clear right 
vesting in any party, has not been found to work ill, it 
often happening that the congregation find it for their 
interest to defer to the opinion of one or two principal 
contributors. A principle also on which the ministers 
acted, as long as the ministry consisted of persons who 
had been regularly ordained, and which is highly honour- 
able to them, of forbearing anything like canvass or so- 
licitation, and waiting to be themselves invited, obviated 
much of the evil which is alleged against popular election 
to ecclesiastical offices by those who contend for the pri- 
vate nomination of the National Church as the more 
eligible mode. Again, another rule which congregations 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



423 



have often established for themselves, that of not suffer- 
ing a second candidate to be proposed till the pretensions 
of any minister which were before them were disposed of, 
has tended much to obviate inconveniences to which this 
mode of supplying vacancies might give rise. 

Mr. Heywood states the sources of his own ministerial 
income thus : (1.) the regular contributions of his con- 
gregation, which were made quarterly, the sum raised 
being about five pounds each quarter; (2.) occasional 
gifts, as for funeral sermons, baptisms, private services, 
and the like ; (3.) allowances from persons not belong- 
ing to the congregation, but who saw the value of the 
minister's labours, and were willing to encourage him 
in the continuance of them. Lord Wharton and Lady 
Hewley were the principal persons who in this manner 
contributed to Mr. Heywood's support. And these long 
continued to be the sources of income to the Presbyterian 
ministers. Under the first head, however, the free gifts 
were sometimes changed into assessments on the persons 
who attended, which the rustics of Lancashire in their 
homely phrase were wont to call " chapel wages ; " and 
this again in most places gave way to pew-rents, when 
the right of private families to pews constructed by them- 
selves at the first erection of the chapel had become un- 
certain and obsolete. The practice of Lady Hewley and 
other persons of her period, to make annual contributions 
to the Presbyterian ministers who needed such encou- 
ragement, did not long continue, but its place was sup- 
plied by public funds established for this especial purpose. 
Lady Hewley herself made ample provision for the con- 
tinuance after her death of those contributions which she 
had been accustomed to make in her lifetime to various 
ministers, and to extend them when required to others, 
giving a large estate for this and similar purposes. This 
benefaction was for the especial benefit of the ministers 
of the county of York, next of those in the four northern 
counties, not wholly excluding those in other parts of 
the kingdom. The Presbyterian fund, the seat and 



424 



THE LIFE OF 



management of which was in London, was another 
foundation of the same nature ; but in this case it was 
not created by a private benefactor, but was a joint 
effort of numerous persons, chiefly opulent merchants of 
London, members of the body. The northern counties 
w 7 ere excluded from the benefit of this fund when Lady 
Hewley's benefaction came into operation. 

But as time passed on there arose two other sources 
of income to the ministers : — first, in the form of a 
house and garden for his residence ; and next, by ac- 
cumulations in the hands of the trustees of moneys given 
or bequeathed to them for the benefit of the minister. 
But the income derived from all these sources proved 
itself, in many cases, very inadequate to the purpose of 
providing anything approaching to a decent maintenance 
to a man of some cultivation and refinement, especially 
when the Puritan excitement had subsided, and the per- 
secution having ceased, he was no longer an object of 
sympathy, as having taken joyfully the spoiling of his 
goods, and submitted himself to bonds and imprison- 
ments in a common cause ; and still more when the field 
of his labours was narrowed by the reduction which 
soon took place of the number of his congregation. 
The effect of this was, that the ministers in many places 
were in a manner compelled to resort to the keeping of 
schools as a means of better subsistence, while in 
smaller places, where there was little chance of establish- 
ing a school, the encouragement became so small that 
it was difficult to find any minister, and the chapels be- 
came closed. It seems as if advantage must be taken of 
the benefactions of the ancient friends of religion, or 
that there must be some assistance rendered by the state, 
if a cultivated, an enlightened, a learned, and an in- 
quiring ministry is to be kept up, except in the midst of 
a large population. 

Next to Lady Hewley, the best benefactors to the 
Dissenters in the county of York have been the family 
of Hollis, which removed in the time of the Common- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



425 



wealth from the neighbourhood of Sheffield and Rother- 
ham to London, where they acquired considerable wealth 
by dealing in the articles manufactured in those parts of 
the kingdom. The ministers at Sheffield, Rotherham, 
and Doncaster are endowed by them ; but, like Lady 
Hewley, they did more, establishing an hospital at Shef- 
field, as she did at York, for poor Dissenters ; thus 
making up to them in ample measure for any loss which 
they might sustain in consequence of having withdrawn 
themselves from the Church, with whom the administra- 
tion of the ancient eleemosynary gifts of the country for 
the most part rested. They also founded schools at 
Sheffield and Rotherham, in the vain hope that they 
would prove seed-plots of the congregations there. 

Lady Hewley made some provision in her munificent 
benefaction for the widows and families of poor mini- 
sters, and for other necessitous persons ; and similar 
good works were performed by the founders of Presby- 
terian Dissent in other parts of the kingdom. None, 
however, were of equal munificence with hers, except 
that of Dr. Daniel Williams, himself a Presbyterian mi- 
nister, who not only endowed chapels and schools, but 
founded scholarships for young ministers in the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, and established an excellent library 
for the perpetual use of the Dissenting ministers in the 
city of London. 

Most of the original Non-Conforming ministers, whe- 
ther classing themselves as Presbyterians or Independ- 
ents, had been educated in the Universities, and they 
themselves introduced none into the ministry but per- 
sons who had something more than what may be called 
a competent share of learning. We have seen the bitter 
terms in which Mr. Heywood complains of the intrusion 
into the ministerial office of persons not possessed of 
those attainments which he deemed requisite for the 
proper discharge of its duties, and for keeping up the 
respectability and influence which, if it is to do any 
good at all, must belong to it. But without taking 



426 



THE LIFE OF 



advantage of the ancient benefactions for the education 
of ministers, to provide suitable education for them is 
no easy matter. There were, however, in the infancy of 
Dissent, various institutions established in different parts 
of the kingdom for the express purpose of training in 
academical learning those who were to succeed to the 
ejected ministers. Some of the ministers of the second 
race resorted to the Foreign Universities, and some, as 
was the case with Mr. Heywood's sons, finished their 
studies in the Scotch Universities. But the substantial 
work of this kind was done at home. In the North we 
have seen that Frankland established an academy in or 
about 1670, from whence many ministers issued who 
received ordination at the hands of Mr. Heywood and 
his contemporaries. Before Mr. Frankland's death Mr. 
Jollie had established another at Attercliffe. Some of 
Mr. Frankland's pupils finished their studies under Mr. 
Chorlton, the successor of Mr. Newcome at Manchester, 
and others wholly studied under him and his colleague, 
Mr. Cunningham. This academy acquired what may 
be called a public character, by a resolution of the Lan- 
cashire ministers at one of their meetings, that they 
gave it their countenance and meant to support it ; but 
it seems to have had no very long continuance. Mr. 
Jollie's was continued after his decease by his successor 
in the chapel at Sheffield, Mr. Wadsworth. In the 
northern counties, Dr. Dickson had a similar institution 
under his care, to which succeeded Mr. Rotheram's, 
at Kendal. But in the middle of the last century many 
of the congregations in Yorkshire were supplied with 
ministers from an academy established in the south of 
Derbyshire by Mr. Hill, and continued by Dr, Ebenezer 
Latham : and it is not to be supposed that the congre- 
gations were supplied solely by ministers trained in the 
academies which were in their own neighbourhood, 
there having been always interchanges of ministers 
through the whole kingdom,, only it does not appear 
that for more than a century any persons were recognized 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



427 



as ministers in the Presbyterian denomination who had 
not studied in some institution of the kind. 

To continue the account of the northern academies : — 
In 1757, the Presbyterians of the North, but especially 
those of Lancashire, always forward when good in this 
way is to be done, established the academy at Warring- 
ton, for which they obtained the assistance of Dr. John 
Taylor, one of the most learned and eminent of the 
Presbyterian divines. This institution had the benefit of 
the labours of other persons whose names are prominent 
in the history of Presbyterian Non- Conformity — Priest- 
ley, Aikin, Enfield, and others. It differed from the 
older academies in its being less especially intended for 
the education of ministers. That was one of the objects, 
but there were always far more lay students than divines. 
It had a valuable library, containing some rare volumes 
collected by Roger Morice, a friend of Strype's, with 
many which have a higher claim to be called valuable 
than simple rarity. This academy has continued to the 
present day, though not on its original site. It was 
removed to Manchester, from thence to York, and it 
has lately been removed again to Manchester. 

Institutions of the same nature have been established 
in London, in Northamptonshire, at Gloucester, at 
Taunton, at Exeter, and at Hackney, as well as other 
places, by persons of the old Dissent, amongst whom 
arose a principal benefactor in this department in Mr. 
Coward, a London merchant. Lady Hewley, in her 
benefaction, included the foundation of six scholar- 
ships for the Dissenting ministry. In these academies 
the course of study pursued in the Universities has 
been reflected, with the additional circumstance, that 
far greater attention has been paid to theological and 
biblical study, and the preparation of persons expressly 
for the ministry. The time usually passed in these aca- 
demies has been five years ; and though nothing can 
supply the want of those stimulants to high exertion 
which are found only on the sites where the shades of 



428 



THE LIFE OF 



the most eminent of our countrymen in times gone by are 
still wandering, it will not be denied that the Dissenting 
academies produced some of the most eminent of the En- 
glish theological scholars of the former half of the last 
century. The second and third race of the Presbyterian 
ministry of England is a body of men to whom justice has 
not yet been done by the pen of any writer. They were 
worthy to be held in much honour ; men who had 
dropped what was repulsive in the old Puritan character, 
but retaining some of its best characteristics — pious, 
humble, and benevolent, seekers of truth and lovers of 
virtue, friends of peace and freedom ; while among them 
shine a few names eminently distinguished by those 
higher and rarer qualities which command the admira- 
tion of those who have little to bestow on men whose 
best praise it is, that they walk with God in the paths 
of unostentatious usefulness. 

All the men of whom I have spoken passed into the 
ministry through the gate of ordination. Nothing shows 
what in this respect was the practice of the Presbyterian 
ministers of the first and second race of Dissent so well 
as the detailed accounts which Mr. Heywood has left of 
the services of this kind in which he was personally en- 
gaged, and therefore it is that I have been so full in the 
extracts which I have made from them. It is clear that, 
in the mind of Mr. Heywood and the founders of Pres- 
byterian Dissent, it was not that ordination kept out of 
the ministry some who ought not to think of entering 
it ; that it gave a minister a distinctive and substantive 
character ; that it provided for the maintenance of that 
equality which it is desirable should exist among such a 
body of persons ; that it produced a sense of duty both 
to continue through life in the ministry and to be zeal- 
ous in the performance of its duties ; that it was a cer- 
tain kind of defence of the minister while he was faithful 
in the discharge of his duties ; and that it had the effect 
of regulating the number of persons who should com- 
pose the ministry, partake in the benefit of its endow- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



429 



ments, and preside in the congregations ; but that there 
was also supposed to be some kind of spiritual grace 
devolved upon the candidate from those who were his 
predecessors in the ministry. This appears by the im- 
position of hands having been invariably a part of the 
service, just as much so as in an Episcopal Church the 
imposition of the hands of the bishop is believed to 
transmit a similar grace. What that grace is specifically, 
is a question not easily answered ; but then it may be 
asked what that grace was which was conferred by the 
imposition of the hands of the apostles, and other emi- 
nent Christians in the early and authoritative times of 
Christianity. Whatever that was, the founders of Pres- 
byterian Dissent conceived of themselves as transmitting, 
and not as being engaged in a mere formal ceremony. 
Great change in this respect has taken place • just as 
great change has taken place in the sentiments of the 
descendants of the old Presbyterians concerning Baptism 
and the Lord's Supper, which have lost, like ordination, 
their peculiar original distinctive, and perhaps important 
character. The word superstition, always ready — and 
which will, if not watched, destroy Christianity and 
religion itself — has been the chief cause of these great 
changes in opinion. 

As the individual members of the Presbyterian con- 
gregations were held together by the slightest possible 
bonds, so the several congregations were combined to- 
gether from the beginning by bonds as slight. The 
only institution which had the effect of keeping them 
together and engaging them to regard each other as parts 
of a whole and to act in concert, was the Meetings of 
Ministers. Anything approaching to Presbyterian union 
and discipline is not to be found. Nothing of the kind was 
contemplated when first the Presbyterians appeared as 
Dissenters. Indeed Presbyterianism, in its proper sense, 
could be only national. They would gladly have had a Na- 
tional Presbyterian Church, but, frustrated in that object, 
they never attempted to establish a Presbyterian church 



430 



THE LIFE OF 



of their own within the National Episcopal Church. 
They were, as I said before, but a body of persons dis- 
connected, and each separate portion of it moving very 
much at their own pleasure, and not a church in any 
sense of the term. But at the meetings of ministers, 
which bore some resemblance to the Provincial Assem- 
blies of the Presbyterian system, there was at the begin- 
ning, and it has continued more or less where they 
have continued to be held, deliberation on matters 
touching the common interest. Petitions to Parliament, 
for instance, have been agreed upon at them ; resolu- 
tions have been passed to support some particular can- 
didate at a succeeding election ; disputes between con- 
gregations and ministers have sometimes been brought 
before them ; votes of censure have been passed ; the 
fitness of particular ministers and of particular doctrines 
has sometimes been brought under notice ; and the 
pretensions of candidates for ordination have been can- 
vassed. I collect this from accounts of the meetings of 
this kind held by the ministers in the two counties of 
Lancashire and Cheshire ; but it was in both cases early 
in the history of Presbyterian dissent ; and in later 
times, that is, during the century passed before the pre- 
sent day, it would be found that these meetings have 
been little more than social and friendly, accompanied 
by a public religious service. 

In the scheme for a National Presbyterian Church, 
which was described in an early chapter of this work, 
the Provincial Assemblies were to send deputies to a 
grand National Assembly. But no national union of 
this kind was ever formed by the Presbyterian Dissenters. 
In one memorable instance reference was made from 
Devonshire to the ministers in and about London to 
know what they would advise in a case of great difficulty 
and great importance ; and the ministers in and about 
London did meet in a kind of convocation, or synod, to 
deliberate on the answer to be returned. But this is the 
single instance of the kind, and must not be taken as 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



431 



anything like a Presbyterian power directing the affairs 
of the general body of Presbyterians, or, since both In- 
dependent and Baptist ministers sat on this occasion 
with the Presbyterian ministers, as if it were any body 
which had the right of regulating the affairs of Non- 
Conformity at large. No doubt the opinion and the 
example of the London ministers have a certain influ- 
ence on the whole, and a certain kind of respect is paid 
to them ; but they never stood in the position of the 
National Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, or were 
possessed of the slightest constitutional authority. There 
is not, nor ever was, any general controlling power re- 
cognised through the realms of Dissent. 

When the affairs of northern Non-Conformity were 
brought before those learned persons who have been lately 
appealed to respecting the administration of the fund of 
Lady Hewley, nothing was more surprising to them 
than that there could have been a religious community 
in England enduring for a century and a half, and pos- 
sessed of no small amount of real and personal property, 
without any kind of bond or corporate character, and 
without any visible sign in the case of each individual 
member of fellowship with the body ; and still more, 
that, though associated for religious purposes, as far as 
there was association, there was no code of laws exist- 
ing among them, no prescribed form of prayer and ad- 
ministration of the sacraments, no common creed, and 
no ostensible articles of belief. And undoubtedly, to 
persons brought up in a church, this must necessarily 
appear a strange anomaly, and such a state of things as 
little fitted either for promoting spiritual edification, 
the permanent success of the party, or for eschewing 
perpetual dissension. Even to those brought up in the 
midst of the system and accustomed to the practical 
working of it, such a state of things would appear very 
unpromising of any useful result when first it was set 
distinctly before them, had not experience shown that 
the contrary is the fact, and were it not known to them 



432 



THE LIFE OF 



that the Presbyterian body is not, nor ever was, a 
church, but only a community of persons freed from the 
shackles which an establishment imposes, and seeking 
truth and the freedom of profession and worship. This 
singular state of things, however, requires a little further 
explanation. 

We have the fact of numerous Presbyterian dissenting 
societies existing without any common bond of union 
but the mere will (if such be) of the persons for the time 
composing them, and without any code of laws, any 
articles of belief, any recognised creed ; and if we go 
back through the whole period of their existence, we 
shall find things just the same, till we arrive at the time 
of the Act of Toleration, which first gave them a 
legalized existence. So far we have matter of plain fact. 
And we find them also in the whole of that period per- 
petually shifting their position, founding their dissent at 
one time principally on one point, at another on another 
point, and making frequent changes also in their opinions 
respecting the ordinances of Christianity, and the doc- 
trines which constitute the revelation by Jesus Christ. 
We find them, however, uniformly asserting the sole 
supremacy of Christ in his Church, the sufficiency of 
Scripture for instructing us in the whole will of God, 
the paramount duty of searching the Scriptures to know 
what is taught therein, the right of private judgment in 
determining what the teaching is, the duty of professing 
the truth which is discovered,, and the persuasion that a 
man's religion is something between God and his own 
conscience, with which no other party — be it the state, 
be it a national church, or be it an individual or small 
community — has any right to interfere. I am not here 
undertaking to defend these principles, but only stating 
them historically as being now, and having for a long 
period been, principles on which the Presbyterian Dis- 
senters have acted. I am not insensible how fearful a 
privilege the right of private judgment is when it is ap- 
plied to truth of such extremely difficult attainment as 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



433 



the truth of perpetual obligation, couched in the often 
obscure language of our Lord and the scarcely less diffi- 
cult writings of the Apostles. If it is a * precious birth- 
right,' 

" The jewel of our house, 
Deliver'd down from many ancestors," 

it is a right which brings with it many duties, and which 
the wise man will exercise with sobriety, humility, and 
devotion. 

At the same time it is in reality nothing more than a 
principle which the Puritans acknowledged and acted on 
from the beginning ; only in their case this freedom of 
inquiry was applied to things of little moment, gesture, 
ceremonies, and vestments, or at most the true scriptural 
idea of a Christian church. It may almost be said to be 
the principle of the Reformation itself, when men, by 
the exercise of private judgment, discovered the spiritual 
tyranny under which they supposed themselves to lie, 
and by the application of that judgment to the language 
of Scripture, the aggregation of what they deemed mis- 
taken doctrine in the opinions of the time, and the ab- 
sence of what they deemed of importance in Christianity 
as then professed. Nor, however many must necessarily 
be led by such a principle into error, can it fairly be 
denied that it is the true and perhaps the only way by 
which errors can be detected and men can attain to the 
knowledge of the truth ; and that, practically, the disco- 
very of truth has in some instances been the actual result 
of the exercise of it. 

No doubt such men as Mr. Hey wood, though they 
found themselves in the position which they occupied by 
the assertion of this principle by themselves and their 
fathers, looked with some degree of alarm when they 
found such men as Mr. Smith applying it to other por- 
tions of Scripture, and deducing from them opinions 
differing from those in which they had themselves been 
educated, just as in all subsequent periods alarm has 
been felt by the ministers who were approaching the 

2 F 



434 



THE LIFE OF 



close of life at the bold positions which they saw the 
younger ministers take by the application of this right to 
the study of the Scriptures ; yet it would have been hard 
for them at the time w 7 hen Non-Conformity was first 
being matured into something of a system to have shut 
up inquiry, which would in effect have been done, had 
they resolved themselves into a church, and established 
certain creeds and articles to be universally received. 
Why do you dissent ? would have been a very pertinent 
question in any young minister who felt his mind 
loosening from the principles in which he had in his 
childhood been trained, to any older minister who looked 
upon the course w T hich he was taking w r ith alarm : and 
the answer which must have been given would have 
justified the inquirer, as long at least as the inquirer was 
under the guidance of Scripture. 

And as at the time when first Non-Conforming wor- 
ship was legalized, and the Presbyterian body acquired 
their toleration, there were many young ministers who 
were beginning to question the doctrines which are 
taught in the Assembly's Catechism and other Calvinian 
formulas, some whose minds were loosening from the 
doctrines which are considered as more peculiarly doc- 
trines of the Reformation, and some who w T ere pushing 
their inquiries very far and approaching to Arian, and a 
few even to Socinian, notions, it would have been ex- 
tremely difficult to have brought such a body to any kind 
of agreement respecting doctrine, and to have persuaded 
all to have subscribed to any creed or articles, rather than 
generally to the Scriptures, leaving what the Scriptures 
really taught matter of inquiry. Such an attempt would 
in all probability have gone far to prevent the formation 
of a powerful Dissenting interest at all, and especially 
since at that time men seem to have been particularly 
awake to theological controversies, and a general uneasi- 
ness to have been abroad respecting the doctrines of the 
Reformers, especially those of Calvin, which had had 
the greatest influence in England. Controversies had 



OLIVER I1EYWOOD. 



435 



been maintained respecting them in the early times of 
Puritanism, and it is remarkable that those Dissenters 
who are now the farthest removed from Calvinian 
opinions are obliged to acknowledge that the stand 
made against them in the most dangerous times was 
made by Laud and the persons who thought and acted 
with him, who are, on other accounts, objects of here- 
ditary dislike ; and that after the Restoration the states- 
men and churchmen, with whom originated the severe 
measures against the ejected ministry which we have 
described, were nearly all men who had no love for Cal- 
vinism in any form, but were the Arminians of the day, 
with the leaning forward to Arianism and Socinianism ; 
so that the modern Presbyterian Dissenter is in the sin- 
gular position of being compelled to acknowledge them 
as being rather in the possession of the truth than their 
own forefathers, who were so severely persecuted by 
them ; and, further, that the beginnings of Christian 
liberality of sentiment in England are to be traced to 
members of the Church, whose articles have never been 
found to restrain practically the application of the powers 
of the mind to the discovery of truth. Amongst those 
ministers of the Church who had succeeded to Chilling- 
worth and Hales, the spirit of free inquiry prevailed to 
a great extent. It had in them the form and name of 
Latitudinarianism — an objectionable word, but express- 
ing really nothing more than the Presbyterian principle of 
free inquiry and open profession. There had also grown 
up in the Church of England a body of divines who 
were public preachers, such men as Barrow, South, and 
Tillotson^, who had introduced what Mr. Hey wood 

* Tillotson was bora in the straitest sect of Non- Conformity, his 
father having been, as we have seen, a member of Mr. Root's Inde- 
pendent church at Sowerby. There is a traditionary anecdote cur- 
rent at Halifax, that when he preached there after he had attained 
considerable reputation as a preacher, his father, when all was over, 
said that his son had preached well, but he believed he had done 
more harm than good. This was about 1680. 

2 F 2 



436 



THE LIFE OF 



calls the new mode of preaching, which was really the 
substitution of manly and vigorous sense for the wire- 
drawn discourses of the Puritan ministry, and a milder 
and juster system of Christian doctrine, instead of the 
appalling assertions of Calvinism. Whether the writings 
of the Socinians influenced at that time men's opinions 
to any great extent may be questioned ; but it is quite 
clear that the writings and the preaching of the divines 
of the English Church of whom I speak did influence 
the members of that Church to a great extent, and laid 
the foundation of that state of things which in these 
days is often described as the loss of its religion, and 
that their influence extended itself not less widely among 
the younger portion of those, both ministers and laymen, 
who had left her communion. 

Again, the free writings of Le Clerc and of some other 
foreign divines had also at that period considerable in- 
fluence on the state of religious opinion in England | 
and amongst our own writers there was Locke, espe- 
cially, who not only taught a juster philosophy and the 
wisdom of toleration, but also opened the way to the 
right reading of the Apostolic Epistles — a fatal blow to 
Calvinian interpretations. 

Nor was it long before the Arian writers made their 
appearance openly, justifying the opinions publicly which 
they had for some time privately held. Clarke's ■ Scrip- 
ture Doctrine of the Trinity' was first published in 1708. 

In this unsettled state of the public mind, no new 
religious community, containing within itself men to 
whom theological study was a professional duty, and 
who descended of persons whose boast it had been that 
they had searched the Scriptures, and brought their 
whole mind to bear on the inquiry, what was taught 
there, could have set up restrictive articles of belief, or 
was likely to attempt to do so. And this appears to be 
the only explanation which the case requires to make 
the fact, that there were no articles of religious belief 
settled by the Presbyterian Dissenters when their foun- 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



437 



Nations were first laid, reconcilable to the feeling and 
judgment of a legal or any other mind. 

But this is only attempting to assign a reason for that 
which, however strange it may appear, we know historic- 
ally to have been the course they took. 

And as an historical evidence that they did so, I 
would refer to the case of Dr. Calamy, who is as pure 
and unexceptionable a representative of the Presbyterian 
ministry as could be selected from among the ministers 
of the generation succeeding that of Mr. Hey wood. 
Dr. Calamy was educated abroad ; and when he returned 
to England in 1687, and was debating with himself 
whether he should enter the ministry in the Church or 
among the Dissenters, he decided on taking the latter 
course, because he found amongst the Dissenters that 
freedom from articles and creeds which he deemed 
essential to the carrying out what he regarded as the 
true Protestant principle, that the Bible was the religion 
of Protestants, and that it was the privilege and duty of 
a person like him to search it in an unbiassed spirit and 
with an unfettered mind. We have the course of his 
reasoning on this subject fully set forth by himself in his 
printed auto-biography. 

But, says an authority of which I would be under- 
stood to speak with no other feeling than that of pro- 
found respect, the Act of Toleration required of all who 
took the benefit of it that they should subscribe the doc- 
trinal articles of the Church ; and it was argued by 
that authority, that Dr. Colton, Lady Hewley's pastor, 
friend and executor, must have subscribed them under 
the Act, as he took the benefit of it. Whether Dr. 
Colton did qualify under the Act is not known, at 
least I have heard of no evidence either way ; but the 
inference that he did subscribe because the Act re- 
quired him to do so, is drawn without, I may venture 
to say, sufficient consideration of the state of the Dis- 
senting mind respecting the obligations created by 
Acts of Parliament when they touch affairs of religion, 



438 



THE LIFE OF 



Whether, I say, Dr. Colton subscribed or no, is not in 
evidence ; but the same reasoning might have been used 
to show that his friend Dr. Calamy, who entered the 
same ministry at the same time, had subscribed. And 
yet we have Dr. Calamy's own assurance, oblique, in- 
deed, but confirmed by other contemporary evidence, 
that he never did subscribe, refusing to do so on prin- 
ciple, and that he continued through life in the exercise 
of his ministry, as other ministers in his time did and 
as many did afterwards, under the protection of the 
Toleration Act, without having the qualifications which 
the Act required. 

A great fallacy running through much of the pro- 
ceedings to which I have alluded, was the supposing that 
there can be no kind of common feeling in a body of 
Christian professors except on the basis of community 
in points of faith. The real community in this instance 
lay in the desire of promoting practical religion, not pe- 
culiar forms of Christian belief, unless the opposition to 
forced community of belief may be regarded as in part 
also a common bond. 

Even in the times before the Act of Toleration there 
was no small difference in the doctrinal opinions of the 
Presbyterian body. Some adhered to the revolting doc- 
trines of the Assembly's Catechism. Some held the 
milder Calvinism of Baxter and Henry. At York, the 
Catechism, still more moderate, of Mr. Bowles was the 
received formula of religious instruction. We find little 
of what can be called high orthodoxy in the published 
writings of Mr. Heywood himself. 

That such a body of men as I have now described, 
called into existence by the feelings, the principles, and 
the labours of Mr. Heywood and those who acted with 
him, and, when appearing as a body of separatists, having 
no firm union, no laws, and no avowed common prin- 
ciples of a character to bind them together, and whose 
common principle of free inquiry naturally tended not 
to union, but to disunion, inasmuch as it could not be 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



439 



expected that the free inquiry of one man could lead to 
the same conclusions as the free inquiry of another, can 
ever have flourished as a sect or religious community, 
will not be supposed by any one who looks fairly upon 
the subject, and considers what it is that induces men to 
withdraw from the communion which is proposed to 
them by the common consent of the nation, and keeps 
them together. As long as the recollection remained of 
the evils which the Presbyterian families had suffered 
under the severe policy of King Charles the Second, and 
they could speak of this member of it being harassed at 
the Quarter Sessions, another fined, another sent to 
prison, and all because they were of a more devout de- 
portment and a more religious spirit than their perse- 
cutors, there was feeling which bound them to the 
system and held them to the ministers who had stood 
foremost in the day of suffering. Even now, at the di- 
stance of nearly two centuries, that feeling has not en- 
tirely passed away, but it necessarily became weaker and 
weaker as they receded from the persons who had been 
the actual sufferers. Nor was the energy of such men 
as Mr. Heywood to be expected in a succession of 
persons in peaceable times, for persecution wonderfully 
quickens zeal, and a minister who takes from choice a 
particular position, or is forced into it by circumstances, 
is a very different character from one who has from his 
youth been trained to the ministerial profession : nor 
are the eminent abilities which Mr. Heywood possessed, 
and which were exactly adapted to his singular position, 
to be found in many or a succession of persons ; and yet 
something like them, at least, is wanted, if a Dissenting 
congregation is to be sustained in a state of prosperity. 
Even Mr. Heywood's own sons, worthy men as they 
appear to have been, had nothing of the ability and 
success of their father ; nor among the Yorkshire mini- 
sters who succeeded him does there appear to have been 
any one who can be compared with him for energy and 
success. Yet the permanence and success of Dissent 



440 



THE LIFE Of 



depended very much on the continuance of a ministry 
more energetic, more exciting, more enthusiastic, than 
that of the Church ; for in the many it must have been 
at first a craving for this religious excitement which was 
one principal inducement to them to join themselves to 
the Non-Conforming ministrv, and when this craving 
was no longer gratified such would necessarily fall away. 

Of real manly principle there was little till the prin- 
ciple of free inquiry and the profession of the results, 
expressed by them in various phrase but substantially 
the same, was extended by them to the weightier matters 
of Christianity, after it had been confined by their Puri- 
tan fathers to the mere mint, anise and cummin of 
Revelation. That is indeed a manly principle which de- 
clares that the field is open, the Scriptures are before us, 
and we must learn from them what it is they teach, re- 
gardless of tradition, councils, fathers, and the ancient 
monuments of Christian faith not sanctified as the Scrip- 
tures are sanctified. And it is still bolder and more 
manly, when it takes the ground of declaring that truth 
shall be the sole thing aimed at, independently of an ac- 
knowledgment of the prescription of Scripture as con- 
taining truth revealed, and therefore unquestionable. But 
this is a principle for the scholar and philosopher only % 
and it is one of the most natural steps for the humble and 
uneducated Christian to take, to decide that such a prin- 
ciple is too bold for him, and that he, for his part, does 
not resort to the places of public worship to hear doc- 
trines canvassed, or even difficulties removed, and the 
unbeliever refuted, but to hear the truths of Christianity 
preached, if not dogmatically, yet on some unvarying 
system which he has been led, rightly or wrongly, to 
regard as the truth. Those of the multitude of a pious 
and devout turn of mind do not look upon religion as a 
something which is to be the perpetual subject of in- 
vestigation and canvass, but which is to direct their 
steps in the dangerous path of life and to sustain their 
spirits in the day of adversity. 



OLIVER HEY WOOD. 



441 



Even to the ministers and the more cultivated por- 
tions of the Dissenting communities, there is hazard in 
the admission of the principle, and still more if it he 
fully carried out, which it rarely is. To inquire, im- 
plies that the common means of inquiry shall be used ; 
but among the first of those means surely it is to find 
out the difficulties which press against a set of opinions 
which have been received ; and yet this perpetual search- 
ing for difficulties and summoning up of sceptical thoughts 
is but a bad preparation for the public duties of a mini- 
ster, or for the calm and steady influence of religion. 

The results of the free inquiry, which the early Pres- 
byterian ministers regarded as their right and peculiar 
privilege, was the departure of nearly the whole Presby- 
terian body from the doctrines which had formed the 
belief of the ministers who had been ejected, and from 
whom they derived their orders. In this they but went 
at first with a large body of ministers in the Church. 
Arianism appeared in the Church before it was mani- 
fested, to any extent at least, in the Presbyterian body. 
Many of the young ministers fell into those opinions 
early in the century ; some of an earlier standing adopted 
and defended them ; warm disputes arose ; but when, 
even as early as 1719, there was a question, which in- 
volved the propriety of putting a stop to the progress of 
them in the Presbyterian ministry as inconsistent with 
the maintenance of orthodoxy, proposed to the London 
ministers, there was a plain proof exhibited that the 
spirit of free inquiry had loosened the minds of many of 
them from any strength of adherence to orthodox prin- 
ciples. In fine, before the middle of the century, Calvin- 
ism in its higher forms, and even in its modifications, 
had nearly disappeared from the Presbyterian congrega- 
tions, and the view of the Christian doctrine taken by 
the ministers maybe best represented by the term Arian, 
though varying in its forms as the ideas represented by 
that term vary, but concurring in placing the Son in a 
position decidedly inferior to the Father. During that 



442 



THE LIFE OF 



period, also, the doctrines which are sometimes repre- 
sented as being those peculiarly of the Reformation, such 
as the doctrine of grace, the fall, the state of man in 
consequence, original sin, the redemption, were boldly 
questioned, first attenuated, and then abandoned. 

There was even in this early period a leaning forward 
to Socinianism itself. Dr. Lardner, who belongs to this 
period, was an advocate of the Socinian view of the 
person of Christ. So appears to have been his friend 
the first Lord Harrington, who was of Puritan descent 
and a kind of leader of the liberal party in Dissent, as 
he was also a principal adviser in all the transactions of 
the Dissenters with the statesmen of the time. 

These changes did not introduce a system that was 
more acceptable to the great body of those among the 
people who were of a devout and religious turn of mind, 
and who clung to the Non-Conforming ministers be- 
cause in their ministrations they found more to gratify 
the taste for devotional excitement than in the chastened 
and uniform services of the Church. 

But these changes led to others. It has been found 
that the profession of Arian opinions has often been the 
prelude to the profession of Socinian opinions ; and the 
experience of what has happened in the old Dissenting 
congregations would seem to show that Arianism is no 
resting-place for men who have loosened themselves from 
orthodoxy. In the second half of the last century the 
ministers were generally, I might almost say universally, 
verging to Socinianism. The Arian ministers said lit- 
tle of the distinctive characteristics of their system 
as against the rising body of young Socinians. They 
preached moral truths only. They delighted to dwell on 
such texts as these: — "Let me die the death of the 
righteous, and let my latter end be like his" — "What is 
required of thee, O man, but to do justly, to love mercy, and 
to walk humbly with thy God?" — " Fear God and keep 
his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" — 
" Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



443 



is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic- 
tion, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" — 
and to speak of their Christianity as being exhibited in 
the Sermon on the Mount, the speech of St. Paul at 
Athens, and the fine summary of Christian truth con- 
tained in a few verses of his Epistle to Titus. Neither 
in their public instructions nor in the private education 
of their children did they comprehend much more than 
this. Was not this enough ? especially when it may be 
added, that men of purer lives have rarely been found to 
do honour to the name of Christian. But it will easily 
be perceived how this made way for the introduction and 
prevalence of Socinian opinions in the Presbyterian con- 
gregations. 

There had been manifestations of them in individual 
cases before, but about the year 1770 they began to be 
more openly acknowledged. In the history of the rise 
and progress of modern Socinianism, the county of York 
takes a conspicuous place. It was from Catterick, a living 
in that county, that Mr. Lindsey retired, when, after a 
vain attempt to induce the legislature to consent to such 
a modification of the Act of Uniformity as would be sa- 
tisfactory to persons holding those opinions, he with- 
drew from his station as a minister in the Church ; and 
it was among the Presbyterian ministers of that county 
that he found that encouragement which is so necessary 
for the satisfaction of minds like that of Mr. Lindsey, 
sincere, humble, and devout, which arises from the 
knowledge that other persons have arrived at the same 
conclusions by the same line of inquiry. From nearly 
all the Presbyterian ministers of that county he received 
some kind of encouragement ; but three of them, who 
were indeed at that time among the most prominent and 
the most learned of the body at large, were his particular 
and especial friends, with whom he had frequent con- 
verse. These were Mr. Cappe, who had succeeded to 
Mr. Hotham, one of Lady Hewley's two pastors in the 
chapel at York, Mr. Turner, who was the minister at 



444 



THE LIFE OF 



Wakefield, and Dr. Joseph Priestley, who was then the 
pastor of the Mill-hill congregation at Leeds. There was 
also Mr. Graham, who had been the minister of one of 
the rural congregations in the parish of Halifax. As 
they encouraged Mr. Lindsey in the course he took, so 
were they emboldened by his example to profess more 
openly than before the unpopular system of Christian 
truth of which Mr. Lindsey was the great and able ad- 
vocate. 

Then it was that their own position as persons who, 
by the terms of the Act of Toleration, were required to 
subscribe the doctrinal articles of the Church of England, 
became felt by them as, to a certain degree, inconsistent 
with Christian sincerity. It was true that few of them 
had thought it necessary to qualify, but there was the 
presumption that they had qualified. On an application 
to the legislature, what was denied to the ministers of 
the Church was ultimately allowed to them ; and this 
change was made in the Act of Toleration, that a general 
declaration of belief in Christianity was substituted for 
the subscription to the articles. 

The name of Dr. Priestley will always be eminent 
both in the history of natural philosophy and the history 
of the reformed religion in England. He was a native 
of Yorkshire, his family being members of the old In- 
dependent congregation of Heckmonwyke, and in the 
course which he took we may discern something of the 
rough and bold spirit of the Independent as distinguished 
from the Presbyterian, and something of their ancient 
want of condescension to the elegances and refinements 
of life, though it was with the latter body that in his 
public life he connected himself. No single person had 
ever so great an influence on the Presbyterian body as 
he ; not only in modifying their opinions respecting the 
person of Christ, but in other points of religious opinion 
in which something of ancient orthodoxy still lingered 
in the minds of the elder ministers of his time. 

In all these successive changes it is not to be supposed 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



445 



that whole congregations would move together, or that 
there would not he some who might think that there 
was a want of a steady and solid ground of religious 
opinion, for which the freedom of change, and of pro- 
fessing the change, was but an indifferent compensation. 
Even at the beginning there were some who from their 
original position might be expected to have remained 
with the Non -Conformists who did not do so, of whom 
the sons of Mr. Newcome of Manchester, who both con- 
formed as ministers to the Church, are among the most 
remarkable instances. But the great weakening of Dis- 
sent by the defection of its ministers took place a little 
later, I mean in the first twenty years of the last century, 
when the freedom of inquiry had produced differences of 
opinion, and differences of opinion dissension and viru- 
lence. Then it w 7 as that several of the young ministers 
took refuge in the Church, two of whom are particularly 
memorable on account both of their eminence as theo- 
logical scholars, and of the exalted dignities to which 
they attained, — Butler, who became the bishop of Dur- 
ham, and Seeker, the primate of all England*. Another, 

* Seeker was brought up at Chesterfield, where lived a sister much 
older than himself, the wife of Mr. Milnes. He was sent to Mr. Jol- 
lie's academy, and afterwards to Mr. Jones's at Tewkesbury. Many 
memorials of his early years and early connexion with Non- Con- 
formity exist, and they show not only this connexion, but also that 
he was distinguished by great kindliness of disposition, an innocent 
cheerfulness, and engaging manners. Persons who disliked him were 
accustomed to allude to his having preached as a candidate to the 
congregation of Dissenters at the little town of Bolsover, and that 
they declined to invite him. There is some truth in the story, though 
the circumstances cannot be now satisfactorily recovered ; but it does 
not appear that this could have much to do with his conforming, 
which did not take place till some years afterwards. But it was an 
inference which we cannot blame him for drawing, if he thought that 
he was out of his proper position when such a community as the Bol- 
sover people would not accept of the services of one whose education 
had been directed to the qualifying him to undertake such a trust, 
and who could not be insensible that he had left the academy rich in 
the possession of theological knowledge, that he had talents of no 
common order, and beside was in life irreproachable. A cool recep- 



446 



THE LIFE OF 



a little earlier, became an archbishop in Ireland ; an- 
other went to the law, and became the Irish chancellor ; 
and the Church of England reckons other ministers who 
were among the most respectable of her pastors, who en- 
tered life from the discipline of the Dissenting academies. 
I do not mean to defend or to accuse these persons ; the 
motive in each case may well be supposed to be mixed, 
something of the terrene united with the pure desire of 
knowing and doing what was right ; but to state the fact, 
that there occurred at this period, that is, the first twenty 
years of the last century, a great withdrawing of its in- 
tellectual power from the Non-Conforming body. 

In each transition of opinion, when the time came that 
change was marked and observable, there was more or 
less of the withdrawing of private persons from the con- 
gregations. This usually occurred at the time when a 
minister was to be chosen ; for while one and the same 
minister continued to officiate, though there might be a 
change going on in his mind, the change was often so 
gradual as to be hardly perceptible, and the attachment 
to an old friend and pastor, which held them together 
as long as he lived, naturally ceased when a new pastor 
was introduced. They were minorities who withdrew. 

What I have described as having been the declension 
of opinion in the Presbyterian congregations, was the 
case in most of those of the West Riding, and in nearly 
all of those of the county of Lancaster. It was the case 
also in nearly all the larger cities and towns, and in 
manv of the smaller towns. But there were still some, 
especially in the rural districts, who adhered to their 
former orthodoxy : so that about the middle of the cen- 
tury there was a kind of new division in the Dissenting 
body founded upon diversity of judgment in respect of 
doctrine, and the term Rational Dissenter arose to de- 
signate those who had departed from orthodoxy, in edi- 
tion from such a body as the Dissenters of Bolsover would naturally 
lead him to inquire whether Dissent really tended to the interests of 
truth and rational piety. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



447 



tradistinction to those who were designated Orthodox 
Dissenters. These were for the most part Presbyterians. 
The Independents had adhered more closely to their 
original opinions. Such congregations of Presbyterian 
origin as adhered to their original orthodoxy attached 
themselves at this period to the Independents. 

The change which I have described was by no means 
confined to the Dissenters. The Church partook largely 
in the defection from the doctrines called those of the Re- 
formation, so that the eighteenth century is often spoken 
of as a period of great spiritual darkness, which means, 
that many had begun to perceive that there was a want of 
true scriptural support to the doctrines which had been 
taught as the truths of Christianity, whether those of the 
Augsburg Confession, or those which had been so ex- 
tensively disseminated among the reformed both of Scot- 
land, England, and France, elaborated by the mind of the 
great Genevan divine. This state of things, however, 
was not looked upon with indifference by a few persons, 
though none arose boldly to stem the receding wave of 
opinion on a great scale, till the two clergymen, White- 
field and Wesley, undertook to call men back to " Old 
Church of England principles," as Wesley himself de- 
scribes the purpose of his mission. They had different 
views of what constituted the Christian doctrine, but 
they had a common purpose in calling men back from 
the Arianism which they professed, and that indifference 
to doctrine as compared with the performance of the 
moral and religious duties of life, to the importance of 
what each regarded as the distinctive truths of Chris- 
tianity. At the same time they had the further object 
in common, — the introducing a greater strictness of life, 
more religious habits of thinking and acting, and beside 
the grand features of the respective system of each, many 
details of opinion and religious practice. Each contended 
that his was the doctrine of the Gospel, and his the doc- 
trine of the Reformation. Both could not be so ; and 
who shall decide, unless men are thrown again on their 



448 



THE LIFE OF 



private judgment, and by free, calm, and unbiassed in- 
quiry endeavour to ascertain what is the truth ? How 
hard is it either fully to admit, or to repudiate the duty 
and the right! Both, however, were eminently success- 
ful. Men saw in them the zeal and energy of the old 
Puritan revived, and all his strictness of life. Wesley 
indeed may be called a Puritan, for he was eminently 
one by descent, and it is clear that there was much in 
his character which he had inherited from his Puritan 
ancestors # . They wrought together such a change in 
the religious character of the country, as it has never 
fallen to the lot of any other persons to accomplish. 
Both became the founders of great and powerful sects. 
Men wrought upon by their ministry combined in con- 
gregations and built chapels ; and they, especially those 
who acknowledged Wesley as the means of their con- 
version, placed themselves entirely under his guidance, 
incorporating themselves in what is properly styled the 
Methodist Church. This work may be said to have 
begun in earnest about the year 1739. 

The effect of the labours of these men and of other 
persons, some of whom were ministers of the Church 
and settled in particular parishes, who thought and acted 
with them, is not to be estimated by the mere fact, im- 
portant though it be, that they established two great 
communities, each held together by the strength of legal 
bands, for they called into existence another body of 
persons who separated themselves from the Church 
without uniting themselves to either of the new com- 
munities. Some of these professed adult baptism in 
addition to the common principles of Methodism ; but 
most of them formed themselves into congregations pro- 

* Wesley's father was one of the conforming Dissenting ministers 
of the reign of King William. He had been educated in one of the 
Dissenting academies. His father and grandfather were ejected mi- 
nisters. Wesley's mother was a daughter of Dr. Samuel Annesley, 
another ejected minister, whose congregation in London would, as 
we have seen, have had Mr. Heywood to have succeeded him. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



449 



fessing those common principles, varying from the more 
moderate doctrines of Wesley to the high Calvinism of 
Whitefield. These congregations took the name of In- 
dependent, resembling in some respects the Independent 
congregations of the Old Dissent. In the West Riding 
of Yorkshire, and indeed in every part of the kingdom, 
congregations of this kind arose. 

There was thus presented to the people the choice of 
two forms of Dissent, — the Old Dissent, which had be- 
come for the most part rational, as the phrase was, and 
the New Dissent, in which the ancient doctrines were 
made prominent, and in which they were preached with 
that energy which, in men like Mr. Hey wood, a century 
before had won the hearts of many, and engaged them, 
even under the disadvantages of persecution, to withdraw 
from the Church and to form separate communities. It is 
but in the natural course of things, that those who loved 
devotional excitement and orthodox Christianity should 
flock to the New Dissent, while those whose aim was the 
discovery of truth and the profession of it, should still 
seek the less crowded gates of the Old Dissent ; especially 
when it is considered that the craving for extemporaneous 
devotional addresses was satisfied in the chapels of the 
New Dissent, or in those of the Methodist church. 

Again the Church itself felt the effects, and not a few 
ministers in it resorted to the mode of preaching which 
they saw so successful in Methodism ; so that in reality 
in many places the tables were reversed, and where men 
had gone to Dissent because the services were more spi- 
ritual, or at least more exciting than those of the Church, 
so men now went to the Church because they found there 
a more exciting ministry than in the chapels of Dissent. 

All this had a very great influence on the state of the 
Old Dissent. It drew away some who had adhered to it 
from the beginning, and it prevented others from joining 
it, who, if Methodism had never arisen, would have united 
themselves to it. 

Of the forty congregations of which I have spoken as 

2 G 



450 



THE LIFE OF 



having been connected more or less with the labours of 
Mr. Heywood, five had become extinct before the year 
1750, namely, those at Topcliffe, Clifford, Barnsley, 
Fishlake, and Attercliffe. In 1773 the ministers of the 
Old Dissent in the West Riding who subscribed the pe- 
tition to Parliament for relief from subscription were only 
twenty-four # . At the beginning of the next century the 
chapels at the following places were either closed or had 
received ministers no longer of the Presbyterian denomi- 
nation : — all in the parish of Halifax, except Halifax and 
Elland ; all in the parish of Bradford, except Bradford 
itself ; Keighley, Idle, Pudsey, Cleck-Heaton, Ossett, 
Hop ton, Bingley, Winterburn, Knaresborough, Ponte- 
fract, and Bull- house ; being nearly all the rural con- 
gregations, leaving few but those in the larger towns, 
and some of those were in a declining state. 

This process of declension, however, has not continued, 
and in the forty years which have passed of the present 
century there has been little change in the number of 
congregations of the Old Dissent, or in the number of 
persons composing them. This is a remarkable circum- 
stance, and it is probably to be attributed as principal 
causes to the introduction of a more doctrinal style of 
preaching, and the giving greater prominence to the pe- 
culiar doctrines professed, as distinguished from the mere 
moral discourses of the former race of Presbyterian mi- 
nisters ; and, secondly, to there being a degree of per- 
manency and precision given to the views of Gospel 
truth which are taken by them, which were wanting in 

* Namely, Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Evans of Sheffield ; Mr. Moult 
of Rotherham ; Mr. Marshall of Lidget ; Mr. Scott of Doncaster ; 
Mr. Hall of Stannington ; Mr. Halliday of Bull-house ; Mr. Benn 
of Swale-dale ; Dr. Priestley of Leeds ; Mr. Whitaker of Leeds ; 
Mr. Ralph of Halifax ; Mr. Graham ; Mr. Evans of Mixenden ; Mr. 
Maurice of Pudsey ; Mr. Simpson of Warley ; Mr. Morgan of Mor- 
ley ; Mr. Philips of Keighley ; Mr. Turner of Wakefield ; Mr. Lillie 
of Bingley ; Mr. Dean of Bradford ; Mr. Dawson of Idle ; Mr. Phi- 
lipps of Sowerby ; Mr. Coppock of Pontefract ; and Mr. Lewis of 
Eastwood. 



OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



451 



the earlier years of Presbyterian Dissent. It is but too 
evident that their principle of free inquiry and the resist- 
ance to creeds exposed them to be carried about by every 
wind of doctrine, so that the truth of one generation was 
regarded but as error by the next. But in the Socinian- 
ism of Lindsey and those admirable men who thought 
and acted with him, they seem to have found a solid 
and permanent ground of belief, and to have anchored 
upon it as in a haven of security. 

Such, then, is a brief view of the more material changes 
in opinion in the religious community which Mr. Hey- 
wood was a principal instrument in calling into exist- 
ence, and of the process by which they have become 
what we now see them. If they have erred, they have 
been led astray by a light from heaven ; for who that 
has known them, and has had the means of knowing 
what the past generations of them have been, but must 
bear them witness that they have had the earnest desire 
to know the truth, and have been swayed as little as pos- 
sible by any corrupt bias to the point of Christian belief 
at which they now stand ? We say our fathers left us free 
to pursue the truth, and put into our hands the means of 
doing so. It will be a hard measure of justice if those 
means are to be taken from us, and our funds and cha- 
pels and the very grave grounds in which our forefathers 
are sleeping are to be taken from us and handed over to 
the people called into existence by the labours of such 
persons asWhitefield and others of his time, persons en- 
tirely alien from the Old Dissent. Whatever the intent 
of the founders may have been, it could not have been 
their intent to endow a body of religionists who did not 
come into existence till long after the full establishment 
of Presbyterian Dissent ; nor could the belief of the ma- 
jority of the Presbyterians have so soon lost its orthodox 
character, had their founders really tied them up in the 
bands of orthodoxy. 

As the professors of this system of Christian faith, they 
2 g 2 



452 



THE LIFE OF OLIVER HEYWOOD. 



form an important element in religious society, as in their 
general character they do in civil society. Mr. Heywood 
has not laboured in vain, though the ultimate effects of 
his labours have been doubtless something different from 
those which he himself contemplated ; but who can calcu- 
late what the effect will be when he sets a stone in motion 
which he has hewn out of the great rock of the Church ? 
Whether further changes will be made, whether the body 
will be influenced still more than it has been by the minds 
of Germany, which have always had such a powerful in- 
fluence on English inquiry, or will recede something from 
the point at which they now stand, restoring at least 
their sanctity and importance to the Sacraments, it is 
only time that shall determine ; or whether some means 
may not yet be found of uniting all the followers of 
Christ in one ecclesiastical union ; but it is a remark- 
able fact, that now, for forty years, a body formerly so 
changeable has been nearly stationary in opinion, though 
still adhering to the ancient principle of Dissent, the right 
of private judgment and the duty of professing the re- 
sults of the exercise of it. It is some slight presumption 
that they have recovered the primitive faith. 



INDEX. 



ACADEMIES, Dissenting, foundation 
of, 242 ; that at Warrington has Lord 
Willoughby, an old Presbyterian, for 
its president, 277; Northern Acade- 
mies, 426. 

Ainsworth, Dissenting meeting there, 
241. 

Ainsworth, Mr., minister at Lightcliffe, 
79. 

Aislabie, Mr., registrar of the spiritual 
court at York, killed in a duel, 264. 

Akehurst, Mr., Mr. Heywood's tutor at 
Cambridge, 44. 

Aldred, Mr., his ordination, 356. 

Allen, Mr., rector of Prestwich and mi- 
nister at Ripponden, 78. 

Altham, an Independent church esta- 
blished there very early, 64. 

Alverthorpe,earlyNon-Conformist meet- 
ing there, 241 ; Mr. Heywood inter- 
rupted when preaching there, 260. 

Ambrose, Mr., of Preston, a chief sup- 
porter of Presbyterianism in Lanca- 
shire, 62. 

Anabaptists or Baptists, rise of, in York- 
shire, 280. 

Anderton, Roger, his ordination, 378. 

Andrews, Mrs., of Little Lever Hall, 
Mr. Heywood's godmother, 29. 

Angier, John, of Denton, a popular Pu- 
ritan minister, 32 ; a chief supporter 
of Presbyterianism in Lancashire, 62; 
scheme of Mr. Heywood's living 
awhile with him, 68 ; his daughter 
married to Mr. Heywood, 90 ; some 
particulars of his early history, 91 ; 
arrested after the battle of Worcester, 
108 ; privy to Sir George Booth's de- 
signs, 113 ; keeps his place, though 
not conforming under the Uniformity 
Act, 151 ; his death, 275. 

Angier, Samuel, his ordination, 244. 

Angier, Samuel, another, his ordination, 
353. 

Annesley, Dr., his congregation invite 

Mr. Heywood, 391. 
Antinomianism preached in the parish 

of Halifax in the Commonwealth 

times, 78. 



Antrobus, Mr., of Knutsford, 188. 

Ararat, suggestion of a singular coinci- 
dence, 43. 

Arianism, introduction of it among the 
Presbyterians, 441. 

Armitage, Godfrey, of Lidget, a great 
friend of Mr. Heywood, 217. 

Armitage, Sir John, of Kirklees, 152 ; 
searches Mr. Heywood's house, 165; 
his unfortunate death, 282. 

Arthington, Mrs., sister of Lord Fair- 
fax, 209, 219. 

Aspinal, a minister ejected at Mattersey, 
203. 

Assembly of Divines, constitution and 

purpose of the, 54. 
Ault, William, lecturer at Halifax, 77; 

removes to Bury, 83 ; lays hands on 

Mr. Heywood at his ordination, 98. 
Aurora borealis, appearance of, 35. 
Bacup, in Rossendale, origin of the 

Baptist Society there, 281. 
Bagshaw, William, his De Spiritualibm 

Pecci, 196; his testimony to Mr. 

Heywood's ' Heart-treasure,' 205. 
Ball's Catechism, 31 ; the author of it, 

ib. 

Baptism of Mr. Heywood, 29. 
' Baptismal Bonds,' published, 356. 
Baptists, rise of, in Yorkshire, 280. 
Barksdale's Memorials, singular passage 
from, 23. 

Barlow, Mr., lecturer at Halifax, 77. 
Barnes, Ambrose, of Newcastle, MS. 

account of his life and opinions, 48. 
Bartholomew Day, observance of, by 

religious exercises, 162, 166, 219, 

279. 

Bath, Robert, minister of Rochdale, 

lays hands on Mr, Heywood at his 

ordination, 98. 
Baxter, his ' Life and Times,' 138. 
Bay ley, Samuel, a young minister, 252 ; 

his death and character, 271. 
Beebee, Mr. , a Non-Conformist minister, 

326. 

Bentley, Eli, Mr. Heywood's acquaints 
ance with him at college, 49 ; put 
into the church of Halifax, 78 ; 



454 



INDEX. 



preaches at the funeral of Mr. Hey- 
wood's mother, 92 ; turned out of 
the church of Halifax, 126 ; retires 
to Bingley on the Five Mile Act, 176; 
preaches at Halifax,241; atSowerby, 
255 ; his death, 270. 

'Best Entail,' published, 381. 

Best, Richard, of Landimer, character 
of, 88 ; singular genealogy of his fa- 
mily, 89. 

Beswick,Mr., rector of Radcliffe, wishes 
to put the law in motion against Mr. 
Heywood, 165. 

Bingley, character of the gentry there, 
202 ; dissenting chapel there, 386 ; 
disputes in the congregation, 401. 

Binns of Rushforth-hall, extinction of 
the family, 202. 

Binns, Robert, a friend of Mr. Hey- 
wood, 206. 

Birchall, William, a friend of Mr. Hey- 
wood, 45. 

Birch-hall, conventicle there, 188. 

Birds, remarkable singing of, in the 
night, 159. 

Birkbeck, Mr., an ejected minister, 
frequently mentioned, his death, 262. 

Blamire, Jonas, his ordination, 394. 

Bloom, Mr., an ejected minister, his 
dispute with Mr. Hancock, 294. 

Bolton, his writings highly valued by 
Mr. Heywood, 47. 

Bolton, Robert, Esq., a favourer of the 
Reformation, 5. 

Bolton-en-le-Moors, parish of, an an- 
cient seat of religion, 4 ; the Geneva 
of Lancashire, 35 ; a dissenting cha- 
pel built there, 388 ; but see the 
work passim. 

Book of Sports, 19. 

Books most in favour with a rigid 
Puritan, 205. 

Booth, Sir George, his rising, 1659, 
111 ; visited by Mr. Heywood when 
Lord Delamere, 1665, 178. 

Booth, Robert, minister of Halifax in 
the time of the Commonwealth, 78. 

Boundary of Yorkshire and Cheshire, 
207. 

Bourn, considered by some the father 
of Puritanism at Manchester, his 
preaching, 6. 

Bourn, a minister, 81. 

Boys, Mr., lecturer at Halifax, 76. 

Bradbury, Thomas, early notice of, 
385. 

Bradford, a Protestant martyr in the 
reign of Mary, his labours and let- 
ters, 4. 



Bradshaigh, Sir Roger, anecdote of, 
196. 

Bradshaw,Peter, minister at Ainsworth, 

lays hands on Mr. Heywood at his 

ordination, 98. 
Bramhope, chapel of, foundation and 

consitution of the, 164. 
BrearchfFe, John, of Halifax, his death, 

316. 

Briscoe, Michael, a very early Inde- 
pendent minister in Lancashire, 64. 

Broadhead, Mr., vicar of Batley, inter- 
rupts Mr. Heywood while preaching, 
211. 

Brooksbank of Elland, 252. 
Brown, Robert, an earlv Independent, 
59. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, his residence at 
Halifax, 87. 

Broxholme, a minister, silenced at Den- 
ton, 16. 

Bruck, William, a favourer of the Re- 
formation, 5. 

Bruen, John, of Bruen-Stapleford in 
Cheshire, attends the lecture at 
Manchester, 6 ; breaks the painted 
windows in his chapel at Tarvin, 27. 

Buckingham, Duke of, favours the 
Non-Conformists, 197; visits Halifax, 
258 ; rebukes persons who would 
disturb the meetings of the Non- 
Conformists, 261 ; fatal event at York, 
his connexion with, 263. 

Bull-house, chapel built, 387. 

Bunting, Henry, his Itinerarium Totius 
S. S., 45. 

Bury, Mr., of Suffolk, collecting infor- 
mation respecting the ejected mini- 
sters, 389. 

Butterworth, John, of Warley, his house 
licensed in 1672, for Non-Conformist 
worship, 240. 

Byrom, Edward, his ordination, 353. 

Calamy, Dr., his ' Lives of the Ejected 
Ministers,' 138 ; indebted to Mr. Hey- 
wood, 396. 

Cambridge, Mr. Heywood's admission 
at Trinity College, 43 ; state of the 
University, 44. 

Carrington, Mr., his ordination, 363. 

Cart, of Hansw r orth, Mr., an ejected 
minister, his death, 262. 

Catalepsy, case of, 167. 

Chaderton, Robert, his ordination, 351. 

Chester taken military possession of by 
Sir George Booth, 1659, 112. 

Chorlton, Mr., succeeds Mr. Newcome 
as pastor of the Presbyterians of 
Manchester, 388. 



INDEX. 



455 



Church, the three leading senses of the 
terra, 58. 

Churches of England, exquisite beauty 
of, before the Reformation, 28. 

' Christ's Intercession/ published, 402. 

Clarendon, Lord, petty in his public 
conduct, 48. 

Clarkson,Mr.,ministeratTllingworth,79. 

Clayton, Giles, an early minister at 
Coley, 84. 

Clayton, of Rotherham, Mr., an ejected 
minister, frequently mentioned, his 
death, 262. 

' Closet Prayer,' publication of Mr. 
Hey wood's treatise so entitled, 210. 

Coley, Mr. Heywood's settlement there, 
69 ; foundation of the chapel, 72 ; 
succession of ministers before Mr. 
Heywood, 80 ; Mr. Heywood's suc- 
cessors, 149, 269, 273, 323. 

Colton, Thomas, his ordination, 377. 

Comprehension, scheme of, for the 
Presbyterians, in 1667, 199. 

Conferences, 209. 

Conventicles, Act of, 1664,161 ; renewed 
in 1667, 199, 201. 

Conversion.Mr. Heywood's notion of,38. 

Coore, Richard, minister at Croston, 
an Antinomian, 79. 

Corporation Act passed 1661, 249. 

Cotes, an ejected minister, 214 ; his 
death, 327. 

Cotton, family of, frequently mentioned. 

Cotton, Thomas, the minister, his edu- 
cation, 253, 263 ; his ordination, 390. 

Cotton, William, his death, 270. 

Court, Ecclesiastical, at York, Mr. Hey- 
wood summoned before it, 130. 

Critchlaw, William, his death, 36. 

Critchlaw, family of, 22, 33, 211. 

Crompton, Mrs. Abigail, the second wife 
of Mr. Heywood, 190. 

Crompton, the family of, 190. 

Crossley, David, an early Antinomian 
and Anabaptist in Yorkshire, 281. 

Cudworth, Mr., an early minister at 
Coley, 84. 

Cunliffe, Jennet, daughter of Robert 
Cunliffe, Esq., excommunicated by an 
Independent church, 298. 

Darnton, Mr., his ordination, 284. 

Dawson, Joseph, an ejected minister, 
his marriage, 89 ; comes to reside 
near Mr. Heywood, 168 ; his ordina- 
tion, 244 ; baptism of his son Eliezer, 
255 ; one of the preachers at Sowerby, 
255 ; sepulchral memorial of his fa- 
mily at Morley, 272. 

Dawson, Abraham, his ordination, 356. 



Dawson, Joseph, junior, his ordination, 
379, 

'Denomination,' technical use of the 
word, 226. 

Denton, Jonathan, Mr. Heywood's fu- 
neral sermon for him, 386. 

Denton, Mr., minister at Coley, 82. ' 

Denton, Nathan, thought to be the last 
survivor of the ejected ministers, 316. 

Derby, slight insurrection there in 1659, 
111. 

Derby, James Earl of, attacks Bolton, 
and is afterwards put to death there, 
36. 

Derbv, Charles Earl of, anecdotes of, 
196. 

Devonshire, William Earl of, anecdote 
of, 196. 

Dickenson, Robert, an occasional 

preacher, 303. 
Dickenson, Thomas, his ordination, 3 79 ; 

succeeds Mr. Heywood at Northow- 

ram, 406. 

Discipline, clerical, a peculiar kind at 
Manchester, 7. 

Discipline, Mr. Heywood's unfortunate 
attempt to set up, at Coley, 98. 

Disney, Gervase, his ' Biographical Con- 
fessions,' 205. 

' Dissenting Brethren,' the, 59. 

Distraint on Mr. Heywood's goods, 215, 
218. 

Dodsworth, his collections one of the 
evidences of the Heywoods of Hey- 
wood, 3. 

Drake, Captain, of Pontefract, a friend 
of Mr. Heywood, 219. 

Drake, Mrs., her case alluded to, 23. 

Drakes, the, of Shibden, 89. 

Drought of 1681, 305. 

Duckinfield, Independency there, 64. 

Dury, Mr., kept possession of tbe cha- 
pel at Honley though not conforming 
under the Uniformity Act, 157. 

Dyneley, Robert, Esq., of Bramhope, 
commencement of Mr. Heywood's 
acquaintance with him, 163; Mr. 
Heywood visits him, 176, 179. 

Dyneley, Wilham, death of, 189. 

Earthquake, 1669, 211. 

Eaton, Samuel, of Duckinfield, an early 
Independent, 64. 

Eccles, a barn there converted into a 
meeting-house, 388. 

Education among the Puritans, 39. 

' Ejected ministers,' sense in which the 
term is used, 138. 

Election of ministers, 261. 

Elland, foundation of the chapel, 395. 



456 



INDEX. 



Ellenthorpe, foundation of the chapel 
there, 164. 

Ellis, Stephen, a zealous churchman 
and great opponent of Mr. Hey wood 
at Coley, 128, 150, 214, 220. 

Ellison, Timothy, curate of Coley, 323. 

Entwisle, Mr., a magistrate, Mr. Hey- 
wood taken before, 292. 

Excommunication, sentence of, against 
Mr. Heywood, 149 ; another, 151 ; 
a third, 1 57 ; a fourth, 297 ; excom- 
munication by a Presbyterian body, 
65 ; by an Independent, 298. 

Eyam, in Derbyshire, notice of the 
Plague there, 196. 

Fairbank, Mr., minister at Luddenden, 
79. 

Fairfax, Colonel Charles, Mr. Heywood 

visits him, 176. 
'Family Altar,' published, 381. 
Farnley-wood Plot, 154. 
Favour, Dr., vicar of Halifax, 76, 77. 
Fawcett, Rev. Dr., his misrepresentation 

of Mr. Heywood's license, 233. 
Firbeck, Mr. Heywood preaches at the 

public chapel there, 289, 292. 
Firth,Mr., vicar of Mansfield, his regard 

for the Non-Conformists, 326. 
Five members, the king's demand of the, 

fast on occasion of, 33. 
Five Mile Act, 172 ; one effect of it, 177. 
Flanshaw-hall, Puritan service there, 

168. 

Flood, great, noticed, 43. 

Fourness, Tobias, minister of Bury, lays 
hands on Mr. Heywood at his ordi- 
nation, 98. 

Frankland, Richard, an ejected minister, 
at the head of the Northern Aca- 
demy, 242 ; visit of Mr. Heywood, 
311, 323; visits Mr. Heywoodin pri- 
son, 322 ; writes a treatise against a 
Socinian, 393 ; his death, 396. 

Fulwood, foundation of the chapel, 
415. 

Funeral feasts, 405. 

' Gathered Churches,' how used, 60. 

Gee, Edward, an eminent Puritan mi- 
nister, 89. 

' General Assembly,' published, 397. 

German ministers, two, visit England, 
188. 

Gibson, Mr., an early minister at Coley, 
80. 

1 God's-gift,' a baptismal name in the 
family of an ejected minister, 253. 

Goodwin, Richard, minister at Bolton, 
65 ; lays hands on Mr. Heywood at 
bis ordination, 98. 



Grammar- schools, method of teaching 
in them, 41. 

Greek pronounced in the University 
manner, 42. 

Green, Peter, his ordination, 363. 

Greenwood, an attorney at Coley, 129. 

Gregg, Mr., vicar of Bolton, baptizes 
Mr. Heywood, 29 ; his family, 30. 

Hales of Eton, a 'Helluo Librorum,'l 18. 

Halifax, parish of, its inhabitants, his- 
tory, &c, 71 ; dissenting chapel built 
at the town, 387, 389. 

Hammond, Samuel, his great influence 
as a preacher at Cambridge, 48. 

Hampton Court, conference at, 15, 17. 

Hancock, Rowland, an ejected minister, 
committed to the castle at York for 
preaching, 210; his dispute with Mr. 
Bloom, 294. 

Hand-fasting, ceremony of, 91. 

Hardcastle, minister of Shadwell, 166 ; 
imprisoned, 207, 209. 

Harpur, John, minister at Bolton, 65 ; 
lays hands on Mr. Heywood at his 
ordination, 98. 

Harrison of Walmesley chapel, a Puri- 
tan minister, 32 ; afterwards of Ash- 
ton, a chief supporter of Presbyte- 
rianism in Lancashire, 62. 

Hartley, David, father and son, 358, 
404. 

Hatfield, Mr. John, of Laughton-en-le- 

Morthen, 184. 
Hatfield, Mrs. Martha, her strange case, 

167, 184. 

Haughton, scheme to settle Mr. Hey- 
wood there, 70. 

Hawks worth, an ejected minister, his 
death, 204. 

Hayhurst, Robert and Bradley, both 
ministers, 81. 

' Heart-Treasure,' publication of the, 
204. 

' Heavenly Converse,' published, 395. 
Henry, Philip, his feeling in respect of 

Sir George Booth's design, 113; on 

the king's restoration, 120. 
Herle, Charles, rector of Winwick, a 

member of the Assembly of Divines, 

54. 

Hesketh, Robert, minister at Northow- 
ram, 407. 

Hewet, Lady, of York, a friend of the 
Puritan ministry, 130. 

Hewley, Sir John, member for York, 
130 ; Mr. Hodgson his chaplain, 218; 
Mr. Heywood visits him, 259, 280, 
296 ; his and Lady Hewley's atten- 
tion to Mr. Heywood when commit* 



INDEX. 



457 



ted to the castle at York, 331, 332, 
333 ; other visits to them, 335, 337 ; 
his death, 389. 
Hewley, Lady, wife of Sir John Hew- 
lev, 130, 323, 386 ; her benefactions, 
423, 425. 

Hey, John, of Craven, his a house of 
hospitality to the Non-Conformists, 
279 ; ordinations there, 298, 303. 

Heyrick, Richard, warden of Manches- 
ter, a member of the Assembly of 
Divines, 54 ; a great supporter of 
Presbyterianism in Lancashire, 62 ; 
imprisoned after the battle of Wor- 
cester, 108; his sermon on the king's 
restoration, 120. 

Heywood, family of, 1. 

Heywood, manor of, 2 ; etymology of 
the name, 3. 

Heywood, Alice, mother of Mr. Hey- 
wood, her early history, 22 ; and 
character, 25 ; death, 92. 

Heywood, Eliezer, Mr. Hey wood's 
younger son, birth, 92 ; early mani- 
festations of religion, 183 ; his edu- 
cation by the same persons as his 
brother John. See Heywood, John ; 
becomes chaplain to Major Taylor, at 
Walling -wells, 291 ; his ordination, 
353 ; many other notices of him. 

Heywood, John, Mr. Heywood's eldest 
brother, his fate, 141. 

Heywood, John, Mr. Heywood's son, 
birth, 92 ; early manifestations of 
religion, 183 ; at Hipperholm school, 
173; at school with David Noble, 
234 ; goes to Mr. Hickman, 253 ; to 
Mr. Frankland, 263 ; to Edinburgh, 
273 ; teaches school at Kirk-Heton, 
and becomes minister of the Non- 
Conformists in Craven, 291 ; or- 
dained, 303 ; chaplain to Lady Wil- 
braham, 304 ; many other notices of 
him. 

Heywood, Josiah, Mr. Heywood's 
younger brother, his fate, 141. 

Heywood, Nathaniel, brother of Oliver, 
at school and college, 50 ; his course 
on leaving the University, 89 ; mi- 
nister at Illingworth, and lives in the 
same house with his brother, 89 ; 
removes to Ormskirk, 90 ; his ser- 
mon on the king's restoration, 121 ; 
assiduous in preaching when ejected, 
182 ; his death, 275. 

Heywood, Nathaniel, the younger, his 
ordination, 353. 

Heywood, Oliver, the elder, his con- 
veraion, 7. 



Heywood, Oliver, a Roman Catholic 
priest so called, 30. 

Heywood, Richard, father of Mr. Hey- 
wood, his early history, 21 ; goes to 
Holland on parish affairs, 37 ; his 
dispute with the Congregational 
Eldership at Bolton, 65 ; his misfor- 
tunes, 141; his death, 274. 

Hickman, Mr., an ejected minister, has 
an academy for the education of 
ministers, 253. 

Hickson, Robert, a principal favourer 
of Non-Conformity at Leeds, 177 ; 
Mr. Heywood dedicates his new 
house, 210. 

Hill, Edward, an ejected minister, 
death of, 211. 

Hill, Joshua, a Puritan minister, 22. 

Hill, Sir Richard, parallel to his case, 
23. 

Hill, Dr. Thomas, Master of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, 44. 

Hipperholm school, foundation of, 86. 

Hitch, Dr. Robert, account of, 185. 

Hodgson, Captain John, frequently men- 
tioned, his early history, 86 ; a con- 
venticle broken up at his house, 152 ; 
arrested and taken to York, 166 ; 
thanksgiving for his deliverance, 177; 
goes to reside at Cromwell-botham, 
279. 

Hodgson, Timothy, son of Captain John, 
goes to be chaplain to Sir John 
Hewley, 218 ; his ordination, 298. 

Hoghton, Sir Richard, and others of his 
family, 106. 

Holdsworths, two ejected ministers so 
called, 220, 282. 

Holdsworth, John, his ordination, 363. 

Holdsworth, Dr. Richard, an early vicar 
of Halifax, 73, 77. 

Hollands of Denton, family of, 160. 

Holland, John, his ordination, 378. 

Hollingworth, Mr., of Manchester, a 
great supporter of Presbyterianism, 
62 ; under arrest after the battle of 
Worcester, 108. 

Hollis family, their benefactions, 424. 

Holmfirth, Mr. Heywood preaches 
there, 157. 

Hooke, Dr. Richard, appointed vicar of 
Halifax, 126 ; refuses to sit down to 
meat with Mr. Heywood, then an 
excommunicate, 150 ; his remon- 
strance with Mr. Horton, 255 ; his 
great hostility to the Non-Conform- 
ists, 257, 261, 311 ; dies, 357. 

Hoole, Mr., one of Mr. Heywood's 
successors at Coley, 149. 



458 



NDEX. 



Hopton, chapel of, 219. 

Horrocks, a Puritan minister, 23, 32. 

Horton, Joshua, founds a chapel at 

Sowerhy, 255 ; his disputes with Dr. 

Hooke, 256, 257 ; his death, 291. 
Horton, Mr., death of, 220. 
Hotham, John, Presbyterian minister at 

York, 334. 
Hough, Mr., vicar of Halifax after Dr. 

Hooke, anecdote of, 357. 
Houghton, Great, chapel there, 164, 

261. 

Hovy, Mr., one of Mr. Heywood's suc- 
cessors at Coley, 273. 

Howarth, a profane place, 240. 

Hoyle, Lady, of York, a friend of the 
Puritan ministry, 130 ; her death, 
207. 

Hoyle, Richard, death of his son, 220. 
Hubbert, minister of the chapel in Ains- 
worth, 8. 

Hulme, Banaster, son of a school-fellow 
of Mr. Heywood's, his death, 43. 

Huitons, family of, rich and religious, 7. 

Hulton, Adam, godfather to Mr. Hey- 
wood, 29. 

Hulton of the Park, a justice of the 
peace, protects Mr. Hey wood, 165. 

Huttons of Poppleton nearYork, patrons 
of the Non-Conformists, 218 ; Mr. 
Heywood visits them, 334. 

Janney, Edward, a merchant at Man- 
chester, and public benefactor, 5. 

Iconoclasra, English, on whom princi- 
pally chargeable, 27. 

Idle, Mr. Heywood preaches there, 207, 
213, 246 ; barn converted into a cha- 
pel, 386. 

Jennings, Sir Jonathan, kills Mr. Ais- 
labie in a duel at York, 264. 

Jessop, Francis, Esq., of Broom-hall, 
anecdote of, 293. 

Independency, its characteristics, first 
appearance and rapid progress of the 
principle, 58 ; appearance of it and 
controversy in Lancashire, 63 ; Inde- 
pendent churches established there, 
64 ; Independents desire to join Mr. 
Heywood's Presbyterian congrega- 
tion, 238 ; an excommunication, 298 ; 
attempt at union, 372. 

Indulgence, the, of 1672, 224. 

Johnson, of Ellenbrook, a Puritan mi- 
nister, 32. 

Johnson, Mr., Fellow of Manchester 
church, 125. 

Johnson, Mr., an ejected minister, 246, 
407. 

Jollie, Major James, account of him, 49. 



Kay, Mr., minister at Rastrick, 79. 

Kaye, Sir John, of Woodsome, inter- 
view of Mr. Heywood with, 246. 

Kipping, Mr. Heywood preaches there, 
248. 

Kirby, Joshua, lecturer at Wakefield, 
imprisoned after Sir George Booth's 
rising, 113 ; erects a pulpit in his 
house at Wakefield, 168 ; brings up a 
son to the ministry, 253 ; his death, 
273. 

Kirshaw, Nicholas, his ordination, 369 ; 

disputes in his congregation, 400. 
Knaresborough, Mr. Heywood visits the 

Spa, 179. 

Knight, Sir Ralph, a favourer of Non- 
Conformity, 289 ; in the secret of 
Monk's designs, 326. 

Knocking, death-warnings, 220. 

Jollie, John, his ordination, 244. 

Jollie, Thomas, Mr. Hey wood's acquaint- 
ance with him at Cambridge, 49 ; be- 
comes an Independent, 64 ; a great 
friend of Captain Hodgson, 152 ; his 
conduct at an ordination, 370 ; but 
for Mr. Jollie see the work passim. 

Jollie, Timothy, ordination of, 299 ; his 
imprisonment, 310 ; visited in prison 
by Mr. Heywood, 323 ; his thoughts 
on Mr. Smith's heterodoxy, 401. 

Isherwood, Thomas, vicar of Eccles, 
school-fellow of Mr. Heywood, his 
death, 43. 

' Israel's Lamentation,' published, 318. 

Issot, John, his ordination, 283 ; pas- 
tor of the Craven Non-Conformists, 
304. 

Lake, Dr., after bishop of Chichester, 
put by the Puritan authorities into 
the church of Halifax, 77. 

Lambert, General, his moderation after 
the defeat of Sir George Booth, 112. 

Lambert, John, son to the Major-Ge- 
neral, 290 ; his lady, ib. 

Lancaster, Mr. Chaderton, the minister 
there, 352 ; Mr. Carrington, 363. 

Latham, Andrew, an early minister at 
Coley, 83. 

Latitudinarians, appearance of, in En- 
gland, 146. 

Lay-preaching allowed by the Indepen- 
dents, 58 ; Mr. Heywood's opinion 
of it, 296, 313. 

Leach, Thomas, of Riddlesden-hall, 
baptism of his son David, 290. 

Learning, state of, in the Puritan mi- 
nistry, 39. 

Lectures, one mode of diffusing the 
principles of the Reformation, 6 ; 



INDEX. 



459 



itinerant lecturers in Lancashire, 7 ; 

lecture at Halifax, 76. 
Ledger, Thomas, of Idle, a friend of 

Mr. Heywood's, 213, 287. 
Leeds, Mr. Heywood preaches there in 

times of danger, 166, 176, 208, &c; 

arrested and imprisoned there, 213 ; 

Mr. Nesse's meeting-house founded, 

240 ; Mill-hill chapel founded, 241 ; 

Mr. Heywood preaches in it, 259 ; 

opposition of the magistrates, 260 ; 

zeal of the Non-Conformists there, 

268, 279. 
Leming, Ralph, a lay-preacher, 313. 
Lever (Little), birth-place of Mr. Hey- 
wood, 2. 

Lever, Mr., ejected at Ainsworth, anec- 
dote of, 150. 

Liberty of conscience, King James' de- 
claration for, 347. 

Library of Mr. Richard Heywood, 32 ; 
burnt, 37. 

Licenses, the, of 1672, 225 ; Mr. Hey- 
wood's, 232 ; Dr. Fawcett's mistake 
about it, 233 ; withdrawn, 1675, 266. 

Lidget, Mr. Heywood preaches there, 
217, 218, 248 ; opening of the cha- 
pel, 385. 

' Life in God's Favour,' publication of, 
297. 

Lindsey, Rev. Theophilus, effects of his 
conduct on the Presbyterians, 443. 

Lister, Accepted, his ordination, 379. 

Lister, John, his ordination, 363. 

Lister, Joseph, and his sons, notice of, 
295. 

Lister, Thomas, of Shibden-hall, his fu- 
neral, 288. 

London, Mr. Heywood's visit to, 317. 

London ministers, body of, 431. 

Lord's Supper, Presbyterians and Inde- 
pendents have different modes of ce- 
lebrating, 84 ; Mr. Heywood against 
open communion, 100 ; used as a 
ratificatory service, 238. 

Lowthian, Andrew, one of Mr. Hey- 
wood's successors at Coley, 269. 

Macclesfield, Sir Thomas Parker, first 
earl of, his parents, 179. 

Maleverer, Mrs. Mary, 235. 

Mallory, Miss, of Studley, fatal duel 
about, 264. 

Man, Isle of, eldest branch of the Hey- 
woods remove thither, 3. 

Manchester, the lecture there in the 
time of Queen Elizabeth, 6 ; a great 
seat of Puritanism, 15 ; the Marpre- 
late press there, 15 ; proceedings of 
Non-Conformists there in 1672, 228, 



231 ; Mr. Heywood invited to be the 

minister, 389 ; singular choice of a 

minister, 397. 
Manlove, Timothy, his ordination, 356. 
Marriage, Mr. Heywood performs the 

ceremony of, 289. 
Marriage, sermon preached at, 23 ; Mr. 

Heywood's to Mrs. Eliz. Angier, 91. 
Marsden, Gamaliel, his death, 306. 
Marsden (alias Ralphson), Jeremiah, 

317. 

Marsden, Ralph, an early minister at 

Coley, 80 ; his sons, 81. 
Marsh, a Protestant martyr in the reign 

of Mary, his labours and letters, 4. 
Marsh, Mr., of Garson, 318. 
Marsh, Dr. Richard, deprived of his 

vicarage of Halifax, 77 ; returns to 

take possession of it, 126. 
Martindale, Adam, his autobiography, 

43 ; his ordination, 94. 
Matrimonial case, submitted to the 

judgment of ministers, 204. 
May-games, 191. 
Meetings of ministers, 375. 
' Meetness for Heaven', published, 

380. 

Meteor, extraordinary, or Northern 
Light, 34. 

Methodism, its effects on the Old Dis- 
sent, 447. 

Midgely, supposed author of the Turk- 
ish Spy, 397. 
Midgely, vicar of Rochdale, his Puritan 
scruple, 15. 

Milner, Mr., afterwards vicar of Leeds, 
in the chapel of Sowerby-bridge, 78. 

Mitchel, James, his ordination, 379. 

Mitchel, Matthew, a Halifax man, goes 
to New England, miseries there, 82. 

Mitchel, Richard, in Craven, his a house 
of ho spit ality to the N on- Conformist s , 
279 ; the first ordination among the 
Yorkshire Non-Conformists held 
there, 284. 

Mitchell, William, an early Antinomian 
and Anabaptist in Yorkshire, 281. 

Mixenden, chapel built, 398. 

Morley, foundation of the chapel there, 
164 ; Mr. Heywood interrupted while 
preaching there, 211; memorials of 
early Non-Conformists in the chapel 
yard, 272. 

Moseley, Nicholas, of Ancoats, his 
death, 244. 

Mottram in Longdendale, Mr. Heywood 
preaches there, 160 ; the church for- 
merly subordinate to Silkston, 207. 

Murcot, Mr., a minister in Ireland, 81. 



460 



INDEX. 



Murgatroyds of Riddlesden-hall, their 
extinction, 203. 

Music, church, Mr. Heywood's reflec- 
tions on, 132. 

Newcome, Henry, Presbyterian minister 
at Manchester, account of his early 
life, 109 ; privy to Sir George Booth's 
designs, 113; his sermon on the 
king's restoration, 120 ; address for 
his license to preach in 1672, 231. 

1 New Creature,' published, 384. 

New mode of preaching, 384. 

Nicholls,Mr.,an early minister at Coley, 
80. 

Noble, David, a minister and schoolmas- 
ter, 234 ; chaplain to Mr. Woolhouse 
of Glapwell, 302 ; account of him, ib. 

Northowram, beginning of the Non- 
Conforming congregation there, 235 ; 
chapel built, 356 ; school, 357 ; Mr. 
Heywood's successors in the ministry 
there, 406 ; but see the work passim. 

Norton in Derbyshire, Mr. Heywood's 
visit to, 327. 

Oates, Captain Thomas, of Morley, con- 
cerned in the Farnley-wood Plot, 155. 

Oates, Josiah, of Chickenley, frequently 
occurs; Mr.Heywood visits, 213, 219, 
288 ; accompanies him to his trial at 
Wakefield, 330. 

Oates, Ralph, son of Captain Oates, his 
infamous conduct, 155. 

Ogle, Mr., an Independent minister, 301. 

Okey, Mr. Hevwood's brother-in-law, 
194. 

Old Testament names, great prevalence 
of, at Halifax, 75. 

Ordination among the Presbyterians, 
56 ; the Independents, 58 ; of Mr. 
Heywood, 94 ; remarks on the im- 
portance of the service, 95 ; private 
unions of ministers for this purpose 
in the Commonwealth times, 94 ; Mr. 
Martindale's ordination, ib. ; first 
Non-Conforming Presbyterian, 244 ; 
others, 283, 298, 299, and many 
other pages ; change of opinion 
respecting, 429. 

Paget, the minister at Blackley, the first 
Oliver Heywood converted by his 
preaching, 8 ; silenced, 16. 

Palmer, Samuel, his 'Non-Conformists' 
Memorial,' 138. 

Papists, Non-Conformists' feeling to- 
wards, 250. 

Parker, Mrs., daughter of Colonel Vena- 
bles, 179. 

Parr, Dr. Richard, bishop of Sodor and 
Man, his relative Mrs. Elizabeth Parr 



married to Mr. Nathaniel Heywood, 
89. 

Pendlebury, Henry, minister at Hol- 

comb, lays hands on Mr. Heywood 

at his ordination, 98. 
Peniston, a parish abounding in Puritan 

families, 156; Mr. Heywood preaches 

there, 160 ; again, and alarmed, 169 ; 

again, 182, 183. 
Perkins, his writings in esteem in the 

Puritan families, 32, 47. 
Pike, Robert, the minister at Bolton, 37. 
Pontefract, Mr. Heywood preaches in a 

malt-house there, 219. 
Pool's ' Synopsis,' original price, 282. 
Portrait of Mr. Heywood, 406. 
Prayer, precaution to deaden the sound 

of, 32 ; intensity of it in the Puritan 

families, 33 ; peculiar system of, 34. 
Preaching, different views of the effects 

of, 76. 

Presage of death, supposed, 216. 

Presbyterian Church of England, scheme 
of the, 55; never executed and why, 
57 ; yet carried out in Lancashire, 
62 ; predominant there, 64 ; book of 
proceedings of the Manchester Clas- 
sis preserved, 65 ; illustration of the 
working of the system, ib. ; Presby- 
terian provincial assembly of London 
dissolved in 1655, 108 ; position of 
the Presbytei-ians between Prelacy 
and Independency, 277. 

Presbyteries, the nine Lancashire, 62 ; 
members of the first Manchester and 
Bolton Presbyteries, 63. 

Preston, his writings in esteem in the 
Puritan families, 32, 47. 

Preston, Mr. Heywood invited to settle 
there as a minister, 106. 

Priestley, Jonathan, a friend of Mr. 
Heywood, 180. 

Priestley, Dr. Joseph, 444. 

Priestley, Nathaniel, his ordination, 
379 ; settles at Halifax, 389. 

Private judgment, principle of, 432. 

Prodigies, 306. 

Pudsey, chapel built, 387. 

Puritan, brief notice of the peculiarities 
of this section of the Reformed, 8 ; 
Fuller's distinction of old and new, 
118. 

Pyke, Thomas, minister at Radcliffe, 
lays hands on Mr. Heywood at his 
ordination, 98. 

Quakers, how regarded by the Presby- 
terians, 45. 

Radcliffe, Dr. John, anecdote of his 
youth, 260. 



INDEX. 



461 



Rathband, a Puritan minister, silenced 
at Ainsworth, 16 ; one of Mr. Hey- 
wood's schoolmasters, 40. 

Rawden, Mr., of Rawden, Mr. Heywood 
visits him, 176, 191 ; his death, 209. 

Ray, John, his ordination, 363. 

Reresby, Sir John, anecdote of, 293. 

Restoration of Charles II., a subject of 
great rejoicing to the Presbyterians, 
120 ; anniversary observed by the 
Non-Conformists, 192. 

Richardson, Mr., an ejected minister, 
frequently mentioned ; brings up a 
son to the ministry, 253 ; preaches 
with Mr. Heywood at Great Hough- 
ton, 261. 

Riche, Sylvanus, of Bull-house, 214 ; 
his descendants, 415. 

Right hand of fellowship, 355. 

Rither, James, his singular account of 
the people of Halifax, 74. 

Robinson, Mr., minister at Rastrick, 79. 

Rochdale, foundation of the Non-Con- 
formist congregation there, 240. 

Rodes, Sir Edward, of Great Houghton, 
186; his relict, 210; his descend- 
ants, 415. 

Root, the elder minister of the name, 
an early Independent, 64 ; put into 
the church of Halifax and removes 
to Sowerby, 77 ; his death, 212. 

Root, Timothy, a Non-Conforming 
minister for twenty-three years, con- 
forms, 212; imprisoned, 216; one 
of the preachers at Sowerby, 271. 

Rotherham, chapel built, 387. 

Rothwell, Edward, his ordination, 379. 

Rudel, a schoolmaster near Horwich,40. 

Rupert, Prince, his attack upon Bolton, 
35. 

Rushforth-hall, in Bingley, one of the 
first places in Yorkshire licensed for 
Non-Conforming worship, 203. 

Rushworths of Riddlesden-hall, their 
extinction, 203. 

Rutherford, Lord, a Scotch nobleman, 
visits Mr. Heywood, 289. 

Rymer, collector of the Feedera, his fa- 
ther's unhappy end, 154. 

Sacraments, diminution of respect for, 
429. 

Sagar, Mr., his ordination, 379. 

Sale,Mr.,an ejected minister, frequently 
mentioned; his death, 292. 

Salisbury, painted glass there broken,2. 

Sampson, Dr., collects materials for a 
history of Puritanism, 387. 

Savile of Morley, extinction of the fa- 
mily of, 202. 



Scatcherd, Mr. Norrisson, his care of 
the memorials of the early Non-Con- 
formists at Morley, 272. 

Scholefield, Jonathan, minister at Hey- 
wood chapel, lays hands on Mr. 
Heywood at his ordination, 98. 

Scots Presbyterians, their connexion 
with the English, 289. 

Seeker, his early connexion with dis^ 
sent, and conformity, 449. 

Sedascue, Major, of Gunthwaite, 186. 

Selden, a member of the Assembly of 
Divines, his opinions, 54. 

Servant, marriage of Mr. Heywood's, 
263. 

Shalcross, Richard, of Manchester, a 

favourer of the Reformation, 5. 
Sharp, Abraham, 398. 
Sharp, minister at Leeds, his death, 398. 
Sharp, Sir Cuthbert, publication by him 

of parts of the MS. life of Ambrose 

Barnes, 49. 
Shaw, John, the ejected minister, 207 ; 

death of his son, 316. 
Shaw-chapel in parish of Prestwich, 

Mr. Heywood preaches there, 157 ; 

apprehended for preaching there, 292. 
Sheffield, ordination there, 299. 
Sibbes, Richard, his writings in esteem 

in the Puritan families, 32, 47. 
Silkston, church of, its extensive parish f 

207. 

Slaughthwaite, Mr. Heywood preaches 
in the chapel there, 206. 

Smallwood, an ejected minister, his 
death, 204. 

Smith, Matthew, his intended ordina- 
tion, 353 ; his ordination, 355 ; his 
questions at the first meeting of mi- 
nisters, 376 ; minister at Mixenden, 
398 ; his heresy, 399 ; his public an- 
nouncement of it, 400, 401, 403. 

Socinianism, introduction of it among 
the Presbyterians, 443. 

Sorocold, family of, at Manchester, 5. 

Sowerby (see Root), meeting-house 
erected there, 240, 255. 

Spawford, an ejected minister, 207. 

Stage-coach travelling, 317. 

Staniforth, Mr., of Firbeck, long ser- 
vices there, 292 ; fast, 326. 

Stanley, Sir Thomas, of Alderley, vi- 
sited by Mr. Heywood, 174. 

Stanley, Sir Edward, a great friend of 
Mr. Nathaniel Heywood, 276. 

Stannington, foundation of the chapel 
there, 164. 

Stretton, Richard, one of the ministers 
at Leeds, 260, 392. 



462 



INDEX. 



Sunday, sports allowed on, 7 ; sabbati- 
cal strictness of the Puritans, 11, 20. 

Sunderland, Langdale, sells Coley-hall, 
&c, 86. 

Sunderland, Samuel, remarkable bur- 
glary in his house, 86. 

' Sure mercies of David,' publication of 
the treatise so called, 216. 

Surey Demoniac, the, 368. 

Suspension from the ministry, sentence 
of, against Mr. Heywood, 131. 

Sutton, Dr., of Leicester, his collection 
of memoirs of the descendants of 
Joshua Kirby, 274. 

Swift, Mr., retains the church of Penis- 
ton, though not conforming under the 
Act of Uniformity, 156. 

Sylvester, Field, of Sheffield, 398. 

Sylvester, Matthew, publishes Baxter's 
' Life and Times,' 138 ; present at a 
fast at Sheffield, 193. 

Taylor, Andrew, of York, Non-Conform- 
ists meet at his house, 259, 323 ; 
imprisoned, 333. 

Taylor, Major, of Walling-wells, Mr. 
Heywood's introduction to that fa- 
mily, 289 ; Mr. Eliezer Heywood goes 
to be his chaplain, 291 ; his death, 
293. 

Taylor, Mr., minister at Chapel-le- 

Brears, an Antinomian, 79. 
Taylor, Timothy, an early Independent, 

64. 

Test Act passed, 248 ; brought to bear 
against the Non-Conformists, 257. 

Texts, war of, 120, 125. 

Thirtieth of January services, by the 
Presbyterian ministers, 165. 

Thoresby, Paul, of Leeds, 212. 

Thoresby, Ralph, frequent mention of, 
passim ; his conformity, 394 ; attends 
Mr. Heywood's funeral, 405. 

Thorpe, Richard, of Hopton, an ejected 
minister, frequently mentioned ; his 
ordination, 284. 

Tildesley, Mr., of Dean, a chief sup- 
porter of Presbyterianism in Lanca- 
shire, 62 ; wishes to detain Mr. Hey- 
wood in Lancashire, 70 ; delivers the 
charge at Mr. Heywood's ordination, 
95. 

Tillotson, Robert, father of archbishop 

Tillotson, 239, 435. 
Todd, Cornelius, one of the first four 

ministers at Mill-hill chapel, Leeds, 

259. 

Toleration Act, provisions of, 359. 
Toleration, scheme of, for the Inde- 
pendents in 1667, 199. 



Tong, Mr., remarkable passage from 

his writings, 410. 
Topcliffe, the Independent congregation 

there, 271. 
Town, Robert, minister of Elland, an 

Antinomian, 78. 
Town, Mr., minister at Heptonstall, 

79, 281. 

Toxteth-park chapel, Mr. Heywood 

preaches there, 288. 
Trusts, dissenting, 419. 
'Turkish Spy,' supposed author of, 397. 
' Two Worlds,' published, 399. 
Venables, Colonel, 179. 
Vincent, Mr., of Barnborough-grange, 

186. 

Vincent, Thomas, a Non-Conformist 
minister, visited by Mr. Heywood in 
prison, 318. 

Uly, Dr., a divine in Essex, story of, 28. 

Uniformity, Act of, its provisions, 133. 

Union of Presbyterians and Independ- 
ents, attempt at the, 109. 

Waddington,Robert, his ordination,305. 

Waite, Mr., a Puritan minister at Hali- 
fax, 77. 

Wakefield, frequently mentioned, see 

the work passim ; dedication of the 

chapel, 395. 
Wales, Elkana, an ejected minister, his 

death, 211. 
Walker, Joshua, of Rushforth-hall, in 

Bingley, a friend of Mr. Heywood, 

202, 219, 288. 
Waller, the poet, a daughter of his 

buried at Morley, 272. 
Walmesley, an Independent church 

established there very early, 64. 
Ward, Ralph, of York, a minister, Mr. 

Heywood visits him in prison, 333. 
Warley, foundation of the congregation, 

239 ; chapel built, 386 ; congregation 

adhere to Mr. Smith, the minister, 

notwithstanding his heretical opi- 
nions, 403. 
Waterhouse, Mr., ejected at Bradford, 

175, 189,407. 
Water-side, residence of Mr. Heywood's 

first known ancestor, 2. 
Watson, Lady, of York, widow of a 

lord-mayor, frequently mentioned ; 

a great patron of Non-Conformity, 

130 ; Mr. Heywood preaches at her 

house, 218. 
Waugh, Mr., a minister at Coley, 81. 
Wesley, his Puritan descent, 448. 
Westby, George, Esq., of Ravenfield, 

185 ; his son Thomas Westby, 414. 
Wharton, Lord, 382. 



INDEX. 



463 



Whitaker, Thomas, an early student in 
Frankland's academy, 243 ; impri- 
soned at York, 310 ; Mr. Heywood 
at the same time, 331. 

' White's Friday/ at Derby, 111. 

Whitehurst, Richard, an ejected mini- 
ster, his strange practices, 295. 

Whitleys of Cinderhills, at Coley, 129. 

Williams, Dr. Daniel, his benefactions, 
425. 

Willonghby, Lord, 141, 277. 

Winterburn, opening of the chapel 
there, 312. 

Witchcraft, case of, 167 ; another sup- 
posed case, 220. 

Wittie, Dr. Robert, anecdote of, 130. 

Witton, Mr., of Thornhill, an ejected 
minister, his death, 262. 



Woodhead, Abraham, of Thong, a 
friend of Mr. Heywood, 278. 

Woodsome, Christmas festivities there, 
246. 

Wordsworths, of Water-hallin Peniston , 
favourers of the Puritan ministry, 
169. 

Wordsworth, John, of Swathe-hall, 
181. 

Wright, Jonathan, his ordination, 379. 

Wright, vicar of Ecclesfield, a royalist 
clergyman, 125. 

York, Mr. Heywood invited to settle 
as minister in the church of Saint 
Martin's, 106 ; Monk's admission into 
the city, 112; activity of the Non- 
Conformists there, 259, 280, 296, 
323. 



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with Map, 15s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF CHARLEMAGNE • 

With a Sketch of the State and History of France from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the 
Rise of the Cai'lovingian Dynasty. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 1 vol. 8vo. with Portraits, &c. 
16s. boards. 



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History and Biography. 



THE HISTORY OE RUSSIA, 

From the Earliest Period to the Treaty of Tilsit. By Robert Bell, Esq. 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. 
with Vignette Titles, ISs. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 

By Dr. Dunham. 5 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, £1. 10s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 

By Dr. Dunham. 4 vols. fcp. Svo. with Vignette Titles, £1. 4s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE THE ITALIAN REPUBLICS; 

Or, of the Origin, Progress, and Fall of Freedom in Italy, from a.d. 476 to 1805. By J. C. L. 
de Sismondi. 2 vols. fcp. Svo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE THE EALL OE THE ROMAN EMPIRE; 

Comprising a View of the Invasion and Settlement of the Barbarians, by J. C L. de Sismondi. 
2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE ROME. 

2 vols. fcp. Svo. 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE GREECE. 

By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of St. David's. Vols. 1 to 7, fcp. 8vo. with Vignette 
Titles, £2. 2s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON THE ARTS, MANNERS, MANUFACTURES, 

and INSTITUTIONS of the GREEKS and ROMANS. By the Rev. T. D. Fosbroke, &c. &c. 
2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, 

From its Foundation to a.d. 1492. By the Rev. H. Stebbing, M.A. &c. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. 
with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE THE REFORMATION. 

By the Rev. H. Stebbing. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE MARITIME AND INLAND DISCOYERY. 

By W. D. Cooley, Esq. 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 18s. cloth lettered. 

THE CHRONOLOGY OE HISTORY. 

Containing Tables, Calculations, and Statements indispensable for ascertaining the Dates of 
Historical Events, and of Public and Private Documents, from the Earliest Period to the 
Present Time. By Sir Harris Nicolas, K.C. M.G. Second edition, corrected throughout. 
1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

THE STATESMEN OE THE COMMONWEALTH OE ENGLAND. 

With an Introductory Treatise on the Popular Progress in English History. By John 
Forster, Esq. 5 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Original Portraits of Pym, Eliot, Hampden, Cromwell, 
and an Historical Scene after a Picture by Cattermole, dB\. 10s. cloth lettered. 
The Introductory Treatise, intended as an Introduction to the Study of the Great Civil War in 
the Seventeenth Century, may be had separately, price 2s. 6d. 

The above 5 vols, form Mr. Forster's portion of the Lives of Eminent British Statesmen, by Sir 
James Mackintosh, the Right Hon. T. P. Courtenay, and John Forster, Esq. 7 vols. fcp. 8vo. 
with Vignette Titles, £2. 2s. cloth lettered. 

LI YES OE THE MOST EMINENT ENGLISH POETS. 

By Robert Bell, Esq. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND NORWAY. 

By Dr. Dunham. 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 18s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE POLAND. 

By Dr. Dunham. 1 vol. fcp. Svo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

THE LIYES OE THE EARLY WRITERS OE GREAT BRITAIN. 

By Dr. Dunham, R. Bell, Esq. &c. &c. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth 
lettered. 

LIVES OE EMINENT BRITISH LAWYERS. 

By Henry Roscoe, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. Svo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 



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CATALOGUE Oi' NEW WORKS 



History and Biography. 

OUTLINES OF HISTORY, 

From the Earliest Period. By Thomas Keightley, Esq. New Edition, corrected and con- 
siderably improved, fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered ; or 6s. 6d. bound and lettered. 

THE HISTORY OE ENGLAND. 

By Thomas Keightley, Esq. In 2 vols. 12mo. in cloth, 14s. ; or bound, 15s, 

For the convenience of Schools, the volumes will always be sold separately, 

AN ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

By Thomas Keightley, Esq., Author of " A History of England," "Greece," "Rome," 
" Outlines of History," &c. &c. 12mo. bound and lettered, 5s. 

This book has been compiled in consequence of numerous complaints of the ordinary School Histories, addressed to the 
author by several persons of both sexes engaged in the task of education. They state, that the abridgments aie, almost 
without exception, so dry and uninteresting, as to be utterly distasteful to children ; that they contain matter far beyond 
their comprehension, and are in some cases too long to be used with advantage. In the present Elementary History it is 
the object of the author to avoid all these faults. The work is brought within the most moderate compass, and nothing is 
introduced into it that is not likely to prove both intelligible and interesting to children under the age of ten or eleven 
years, for whose use it is designed. 

THE HISTORY OF GREECE. 

By Thomas Keightley, Esq. Third edition, 12mo. 6s. 6d. cloih,. or 7s. bound. 
ELEMENTARY HISTORY of GREECE, 18mo. 3s. 6d. bound. 

THE HISTORY OF ROME 

To the end of the Republic. By Thomas Keightley, Esq. Third edition, 12mo. 6s. 6d. 
or 7s. bound, 

ELEMENTARY HISTORY of ROME, 18mo. 3s. 6d. bound. 

THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 

From the Accession of Augustus to the end of the Empire in the West. By T. Keightley, 
Esq. 12mo. 6s. 6d. cloth, or 7s. bound. 
QUESTIONS on the HISTORIES of ENGLAND (2 Parts), ROME, and GREECE, Is. each. 

THE BIOGRAPHICAL TREASURY: 

A new and complete Dictionary of Universal Biography. Consisting 1 of the Lives of above 
12,000 eminent Persons from the Earliest Periods of History to the year 1841. By Samuel 
Maunder. New Edition, with Supplement. Fcp. 8vo. 8s. 6d. cloth lettered j or 10s. 6d. 
bound in roan with gilt edges. 

THE TREASURY OF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY; 

Comprising a general introductory Outline of Universal History, ancient and modern, and 
a complete series of separate Histories of every Nation that exists or has existed in the 
"World ; in which is developed their Rise, Progress, and Present Condition ; the Moral and 
Social Character of their respective Inhabitants, their Religion, Manners, and Customs ; 
together with the Geographical Position and Commercial Advantages of each Country, their 
Natural Productions, and General Statistics. By Samuel Maunder. 1 vol. Fcp. 8vo.— 
(In the press.) 

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

By Sir James Mackintosh ; W. Wallace, Esq. ; and Robert Bell, Esa. 10 voTs_fcp. 
8vo. with Vignette Titles, s63. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 

By Sir Walter Scott, Bart, New edition. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth 
lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF IRELAND. 

By Thomas Moore, Esq. Vols. 1 to 3, with Vignette Titles, 18s. 

THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

From the Discovery of America to the Election of General Jackson to the Presidency. By the 
Rev. H. Fergus. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF FRANCE, 

From the Earliest Period to the Abdication of Napoleon. By E. E. Crowe, Esq. 3 vols. fcp. 
8vo. with Vignette Titles, 18s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, 

From the Invasion by the Romans to the Belgian Revolution in 1830„ By T. C Grattan, 
Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND. 

1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 



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7 



History and Biography. 

HISTORICAL RECORDS OF THE BRITISH ARMY : 

Comprising the History of every Regiment in Her Majesty's Service. By Richard Cannon, 
Esq., Adjutant-General's Office, Horse Guards. 

The following are already published : 

1. The LIFE GUARDS— Containing- an account of the Formation of the Corps in the year 1660, 
and of its subsequent Services to 1836. Illustrated with Plates. 2d Edition, 8vo. 12s. boards. 

2. The ROYAL REGIMENT of HORSE GUARDS, or OXFORD BLUES— Its Services, and 
the transactions in which it has been engaged from its establishment in 1661, to the present 
time. By Edmund Packe, late Captain, Royal Horse Guards. With Plates, and Portrait 
of Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford, 1st Colonel of the Regiment. 8vo. 10s.. cloth lettered. 

3. The FIRST, or KING'S REGIMENT OF DRAGOON GUARDS-Containingan account of 
the Formation of the Regiment in 1685, and of its subsequent Services to 1836. Illustrated 
with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

4. The SECOND, or QUEEN'S REGIMENT OF DRAGOON GUARDS (Queen's Bays)- 
Containing an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1685, and of its subsequent Ser- 
vices to 1837. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered 

5. The THIRD, or PRINCE OF WALES' REGIMENT OF DRAGOON GUARDS— Contain- 
ing an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1685, and of its subsequent Services to 
1838. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. in boards. 

6. The FOURTH, or ROYAL IRISH REGIMENT OF DRAGOON GUARDS— Containing 
an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1685, and of its subsequent Services to 1838. 
Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

7. The FIFTH, or PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES' REGIMENT OF DRAGOON 
GUARDS -Containing an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1685, with its subse- 
quent Services to 1838. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s; cloth lettered. 

8. The SIXTH DRAGOON GUARDS. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

9. The SEVENTH, or PRINCESS ROYAL'S REGIMENT OF DRAGOON GUARDS— Con- 
taining an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1688, and of its subsequent Services 
to 1839. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

10. The FIRST, or ROYAL REGIMENT OF DRAGOONS— Containing an account of its 
Formation in the Reign of King Charles the Second, and of its subsequent Services to 1839. 
Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

11. The ROYAL REGIMENT OF SCOTS DRAGOONS ; now, The Second, or Royal North 
British Dragoons, commonly called The Scots Greys— Containing an account of the Forma- 
tion of the Regiment in the Reign of King Charles the Second, and of its subsequent Services 
to 1839. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

12. The FIRST, or ROYAL REGIMENT OF FOOT— Containing an account of the Origin of 
the Regiment in the Reign of King James the Sixth of Scotland, and of its subsequent Ser- 
vices to 1838. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 12s. cloth lettered. 

13. The SECOND, or QUEEN'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF FOOT- Containing an account of 
the Formation of the Regiment in 1661, and of its subsequent Services to 1837. 8vo. 8s. bds. 

14. The THIRD REGIMENT OF FOOT, or THE BUFFS ; formerly designated the Holland 
Regiment— Containing an account of its Origin in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of its 
subsequent Services to 1838. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 12s. boards. 

15. The FOURTH, or KING'S OWN REGIMENT OF FOOT-Containing an account of the 
Formation of the Regiment in 1680, and its subsequent Service to 1839. Illustrated with Plates. 
8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

16. The FIFTH REGIMENT OF FOOT, or NORTHUMBERLAND FUSILEERS— Containing 
an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1674, and of its subsequent Services to 1837. 
Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

17. The SIXTH, or ROYAL FIRST WARWICKSHIRE REGIMENT OF FOOT-Containing 
an account of the Formation of the Regiment in the year 1674, and of its subsequent Services 
to 1838. Illustrated with Plates. 8vo. 8s. cloth lettered. 

18. The EIGHTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT OF FOOT, or CONNAUGHT RANGERS— Contain- 
ing an account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1793, and of its subsequent Services to 
1837. With Plate. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered. 

LIVES 0E THE MOST EMINENT BRITISH MILITARY 

COMMANDERS. By the Rev. G. R. Gleig, 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 18s. 
cloth lettered. 

LIVES 0E THE BRITISH ADMIRALS ; 

with an Introductory View of the Naval History of England. By R. South ey, Esq. and 
R. Bell, Esq. 5 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, £\. 10s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY 0E THE GERMANIC EMPIRE. 

By Dr. Dunham. 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 18s. cloth lettered. 



8 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



History and Biography. 



LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT FOREIGN STATESMEN. 

By G. P. R. James, Esq., and E. E. Crowe, Esq. 5 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 
30s. clo tli lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS, 

The Temple Church, and the Temple. By C. G. Addison, of the Inner Temple. 2d Edition, 
enlarged, 1 vol. square crown 8vo. with Illustrations, 18s. cloth lettered. — (Just ready.) 

This work forms a complete history of the Order of the Temple, from the time of its foundation in Palestine, to the 
period of its abolition by the Pope and the Council of Trent. A full and interesting account is given of the establishment 
of the Knights Templars in Great Britain, of the foundation of the Temple in London, and of the erection of the Temple 
Church. 

SIR HENRY CAYENDISH'S DEBATES OF THE HOUSE OF 

COMMONS, during the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, commonly called the 
Unreported Parliament. To which are appended, Illustrations of the Parliamentary History 
of the Reign of George III., consisting of Unpublished Letters, Private Journals, Memoirs, 
&c. Drawn up from the Original MSS., by J. Wright, Esq., Editor of the Parliamentary 
History of England. In 4 vols, royal 8vo. Vol. 1 is now ready, 25s. in cloth lettered. This 
work is also published in Parts, 6s. each, of which four are now published. 

It has often been regretted that the proceedings of the House of Commons, during the thirteenth Parliament of Great 
Britain, which met in May, 1768, and was dissolved in June, 1771, should, in consequence of the strict enforcement of the 
standing order for the exclusion of strangers from the gallery of the house, have remained nearly a blank in the history 
of the country. The debates of this period, were, however, fortunately taken down by a member of the house, Mr. Henry 
Cavendish, and the editor having discovered his MSS., and obtained permission to print them, they are now given to the 
world. The collection contains upwards of two hundred speeches by Burke, which have never seen the light; together 
with a number of the most valuable < speeches of Mr. George Grenville, Lord North, Mr. Dunning, Mr. Thurlow, Mr. 
Wedderburn, Mr. Fox, Colonel Barre, Mr., afterwards Chief Justice, Blackstone, &c. &c. It embraces the whole of the 
stirring period of the publication of the Letters of Junius, and exhibits the feeling which prevailed in the House and in 
the country, previous to the unhappy contest which took place between Great Britain and her American Colonies, 

THE MILITARY LIFE OF FIELD-MARSHAL THE DUKE OF 

WELLINGTON, K.G., &c. &c. By Major Basil Jackson, and Captain C. Rochfort 
Scott, late of the Royal Staff Corps. 2 vols. 8vo. with Portraits and numerous Plans of 
Battles, 30s. cloth lettered. 

THE LIFE OF THOMAS BURGESS, D.D. F.R.S. &c. 

Late Lord Bishop of Salisbury. By John S. Harford, Esq. D.C.L. F.L.S. 2d Edition, with 
additions, fcp. 8vo. with Portrait, 8s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY OF THE PEL0P0NNESIAN WAR. 

By Thucydides. Newly Translated into English, and accompanied with very copious notes, 
Philological and Explanatory, Historical and Geographical. By the Rev. S. T. Bloomfield, 
D.D. F.S.A. 3 vols. 8vo. with Maps and Plates, ^62. 5s. boards. 

HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS, 

For the Use of Young People ; with a Selection of British and General Biography. By 
R. Mangnall. New Edition, with the Author's last Corrections and Additions, and other very 
considerable recent Improvements, 12mo. bound, 4s. 6d. 
*#* The only edition, with the Author's latest Additions and Improvements, bears the imprint 
of Messrs Longman and Co. 

QUESTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF EUROPE ; 

A Sequel to Mangnall's Historical Questions : comprising Questions on the History of the 
Nations of Continental Europe not comprehended in that work. By Julia Corner. New 
Edition, 12mo. 5s. bound and lettered. 

THE NEW PANTHEON; 

Or, an Introduction to the Mythology of the Ancients, in Question and Answer ; compiled for 
the Use of Young Persons. To which are added, an Accentuated Index, Questions for Exercise, 
and Poetical Illustrations of Grecian Mythology, from Homer and Virgil. By W. J. Hort. 
New Edition, considerably enlarged by the addition of the Oriental and Northern Mythology, 
18mo. 17 Plates, 5s. 6d. bound. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF CHRONOLOGY 

And ANCIENT HISTORY. By W. J. Hort. New Edition, ISmo. 4s. bound. 

AN ABRIDGMENT OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY, 

Adapted to the Use of Families and Schools ; with appropriate Questions at the end of each 
Section. By the Rev. H. J. Knapp, M.A. New Edition, with considerable additions, l2mo. 
5s. bound. 

ON THE STUDY AND USE OF ANCIENT AND MODERN 

HISTORY ; containing Observations and Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of those 
Events which have produced conspicuous changes in the aspect of the World, and the general 
state of Human Affairs. In a Series of Letters. By John Bigland, Author of " Letters on 
the Political State of Europe." 7th Edition, 1 vol. 12mo. 6s. boards. 



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9 



History and Biography. 

LIYES OP THE MOST EMINENT LITERARY MEN OE 

ITALY, SPAIN, and PORTUGAL. By Mrs. Shelley, Sir D. Brewster, J. Montgomery, 
&c. 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 18s. cloth lettered. 

THE LIYES OE BRITISH DRAMATISTS. 

By Dr. Dunham, R. Bell, Esq. &c. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

LIYES OE THE MOST EMINENT FRENCH WRITERS. 

By Mrs. Shelley, and others. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 



III. NOVELS, TALES, *c. 

THE JACQUERIE ; " 

Or, the Lady and the Page. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. lis. 6d. 

THE ANCIENT REGIME : 

A Tale. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. sSl. lis. 6d. 

CORSE DE LEON; 

Or the Brigand. By G. P. R. James. Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d. 

THE KING'S HIGHWAY: 

A Novel. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d. 

HENRY OE GUISE ; 

Or, the States of Blois. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £i. lis. 6d. 

THE HUGUENOT : 

A Tale of the French Protestants. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. 31s. 6d. 

THE GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 

By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £1. lis. 6d. 

THE ROBBER. 

By G. P. R. James, Esq. 2d Edition, 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d. 

LIEE AND ADYENTURES OE JOHN MARSTON HALL. 

By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d. 

MARY OE BURGUNDY; 

Or, the Revolt of Ghent. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d, 

ONE IN A THOUSAND ; 

Or, the Days of Henri- Quatre. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d. 

ATTILA : 

A Romance. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 vols, post 8vo. £\. lis. 6d. 

THE DOCTOR, &c. 

5 vols, post 8vo. £2. 12s. 6d. cloth. 

POOR JACK. 

By Captain Marryat. 1 vol. medium 8vo. with above 40 Illustrations by Clarkson Stan- 
field, price 14s. cloth lettered. 

JOSEPH RUSHBROOK, THE POACHER. 

By Captain Marryat. 3 vols, post 8vo. £1. lis. 6d. 

JANE SINCLAIR; 

Or, the Fawn of Spring Vale : Lha Dhu, or the Dark Day ; the Clarionet ; the Dead Boxer ; 
the Misfortunes of Barney Branagan ; the Resurrections of Barney Bradley. By William 
Carleton. 3 vols, post 8vo. aSl. lis. 6d. boards. 

EARDOROUGHA THE MISER ; 

Or, the Convicts of Lisnamona. By William Carleton. 2d Edition, fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth. 

EATHER BUTLER AND THE LOUGH DERG PILGRIM. 

By William Carleton. 2d Edition, fcp. 8vo. 3s. 6d. cloth. 



10 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



IV. ENCYCLOPAEDIAS AND DICTIONARIES. 



A DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART; 

Comprising the History, Description, and Scientific Principles of every Branch of Human 
Knowledge ; with the Derivation and Definition of all the Terms in General Use. Edited by 
W. T. Brande, F.R.S. L. and E. ; assisted by Joseph Cauvin, Esq. The various depart- 
ments are by Gentlemen of eminence in each. 1 very thick vol. 8vo. containing 1 above 1400 
closely printed pages, illustrated by Wood Engravings, jS3. handsomely bound in cloth, and 
lettered. This work is also published in 12 parts, 5s. each, of which 11 have appeared. 

A DICTIONARY, GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL, AND 

HISTORICAL, of the various Countries, Places, and Principal Natural Objects in the WORLD. 
Illustrated with Maps. By J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. 2 very thick vols. 8vo. ^4. bound in 
cloth, and lettered. This work is also published in parts, 5s. each, of which 14 have appeared ; 
to be completed in 2 more parts. 

A DICTIONARY OF COMMERCE AND COMMERCIAL NAVI- 

GATION (Practical, Theoretical, and Historical.) With Maps and Plans. By J. R. 
M'Culloch, Esq. New Edition, with Supplement, £1. 10s. cloth lettered. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GEOGRAPHY ; 

Comprising a complete Description of the Earth: exhibiting its Relation to the Heavenly 
Bodies, its Physical Structure, the Natural History of each Country, and the Industry, Com- 
merce, Political Institutions, and Civil and Social State of all Nations. By Hugh Murray, 
F.R.S. E. : assisted in Astronomy, &c. by Professor Wallace ; Geology, &c. by Professor 
Jameson; Botany, &c. by Sir W. J. Hooker; Zoology, &c. by W. Swainson, Esq. New 
Edition, brought down to 1840 : with 82 Maps, drawn by Sidney Hall, and upwards of 1000 other 
Engravings on Wood, from Drawings by Swainson, T. Landseer, Sowerby, Strutt, &c. repre- 
senting the most remarkable Objects of Nature and Art in every Region of the Globe. 1 vol. 
8vo. containing upwards of 1500 pages, ^3, cloth. 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RURAL SPORTS ; 

Or, a complete Account, Historical, Practical, and Descriptive, of Hunting, Shooting, Fishing, 
Racing, and other Field Sports and Athletic Amusements of the present day. By Delabere 
P. Blaine, Esq., Author of "Outlines of the Veterinary Art," " Canine Pathology," &c. &c. 
Illustrated by nearly 600 Engravings on Wood, by R. Branston, from Drawings by Aiken, 
T. Landseer, Dickes, &c. 1 very thick vol. 8vo. £1. 10s. handsomely bound in fancy cloth, 
lettered. 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING ; 

Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Land- 
scape Gardening, including all the latest improvements, a General History of Gardening in 
all Countries, and a Statistical View of its Present State, with Suggestions for its Future 
Progress in the British Isles. By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. H.S. &c. New Edition, greatly 
enlarged and improved, in 1 very thick vol. 8vo. with nearly 1000 engravings on Wood, 
^2. 10s. cloth lettered. 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PLANTS ; 

Comprising the Description, Specific Character, Culture, History, Application in the Arts, 
and every other desirable particular, respecting all the Plants Indigenous to, Cultivated in, or 
Introduced into Britain ; combining all the advantages of a Linnaean and Jussieuean Species 
Plantarum, an Historia Plantarum, a Grammar of Botany, and a Dictionary of Botany and 
Vegetable Culture. The whole in English, with the Synonymes of the commoner Plants in 
the different European and other languages ; the scientific names accentuated, their etymology 
explained ; the Classes, Orders, and Botanic Terms illustrated by engravings ; and with 
Figures of nearly 10,000 species, exemplifying several Individuals belonging to every genus 
included in the work. Edited by J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. H.S. &c. : the Specific Characters by 
Professor Lindley ; the Drawings by J. D. C. Sowerby, F.L.S. ; and the Engravings by 
R. Branston. 2d Edition, corrected, with Supplement, in 1 very thick vol. 8vo. ^3. 13s. 6d. 
cloth lettered. 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AGRICULTURE. 

By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. H.S. &c. Comprising the Theory and Practice of the Valuation, 
Transfer, Laying out, Improvement, and Management of Landed Property, and the Cultiva- 
tion and Economy of the Animal and Vegetable Productions of Agriculture, including the 
latest Improvements, a General History of Agriculture in all Countries, and a Statistical 
View of its Present State, with Suggestions for its Future Progress. With nearly 1,300 
Engravings on Wood. 3d Edition, with a Supplement, containing all the recent Improve- 
ments, in 1 very thick vol. 8vo. £1. 10s. cloth lettered. 

A DICTIONARY OF PRINTING. 

By William Savage, Author of " Practical Hints on Decorative Printing," and a Treatise 
" On the Preparation of Printing Ink, both Black and Coloured." In 1 vol. 8vo. with numerous 
Diagrams, £\. 6s. cloth lettered. 



PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, AND CO. 



11 



Encyclopaedias and Dictionaries. 

A DICTIONARY OF AB^sTmANUMCTURES, AND MINES ; 

Containing a clear Exposition of their Principles and Practice. By Andrew Ure, M.D. 
F.R.S. M.G.S. &c. New Edition, in 1 thick vol. 8vo. illustrated with 1,241 Engravings on 
Wood, sS2 10s. cloth lettered. 

A DICTIONARY OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE ; 

Comprising General Pathology, the Nature and Treatment of Diseases, Morbid Structures, 
and the Disorders especially incidental to Climates, to Sex, and to the different Epochs of 
Life, with numerous approved Formulae of the Medicines recommended. By James Copland, 
M.D., Consulting Physician to Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital ; Senior Physician to the 
Royal Infirmary for Children ; Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London ; of the 
Medical and Chirurgical Societies of London and Berlin, &c. Publishing in parts, of which 7 
have appeared. 

AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA 0E COTTAGE, FARM, AND YILLA 

ARCHITECTURE. With about 1,100 pages of Letterpress, and upwards of 2,000 Wood 
Engravings ; embracing designs of Cottages, Farm Houses, Farmeries, Villas, Country Inns, 
Public Houses, Parochial Schools, &c. ; including the interior Finishings and Furniture ; 
accompanied by Analytical and Critical Remarks illustrative of the Principles of Architectural 
Science and Taste, on which the Designs for Dwellings are composed, and of Landscape 
Gardening, with Reference to their Accompaniments. By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. &c. New 
Edition, corrected, in 1 very thick vol. 8vo. with above 100 of the Plates re engraved, contain- 
ing above 100 entirely new illustrations, £Z. 3s. handsomely bound in cloth, and lettered. 

THE FARMER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA, 

And DICTIONARY of RURAL AFFAIRS : embracing the most recent Discoveries in Agri- 
cultural Chemistry ; adapted to the comprehension of unscientifie Readers. By Cuthbert 
W. Johnson, Esq., Barrister at Law, Editor of the " Farmer's Almanack," &c. Illustrated 
with Engravings of the most approved Agricultural Instruments. In 1 thick vol. 8vo. £%. 10s. 
bound in cloth, and lettered. This work is published also in parts, at 5s. each, of which 9 have 
appeared ; to be completed in 1 more part. 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ARCHITECTURE ; 

Historical, Theoretical, and Practical. By Joseph Gwilt, Esq. F.S.A. In 1 thick vol. 8vo. 
with numerous Illustrations on Wood. (In the Press.) 

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CIVIL ENGINEERING ; 

Historical, Theoretical, and Practical. By E. Cresy, Esq. F.A.S. C.E. In 1 thick vol. 8vo. 
with numerous Illustrations on Wood. (Preparing for Publication.) 



V. JUVEN1LE_W©RKS a 

THE BOY'S COUNTRY BOOK : 

Being the real Life of a Country Boy, written by himself ; exhibiting all the Amusements, 
Pleasures, and Pursuits of Children in the Country. Edited by William Howitt, Author 
of " The Rural Life of England," &c. 2d Edition, 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with about 40 Woodcuts, 
8s. cloth. 

MASTERMAN READY; 

Or, the Wreck of Pacific. Written for Young People. By Captain Marryat. 1 vol. fcp. 
8vo. with numerous Engravings on Wood, 7s. 6d. cloth lettered. 
Part 2 will be published in a few days. 

THE BOY'S OWN BOOK : 

A Complete Encyclopaedia of all the Diversions, Athletic, Scientific, and Recreative, of Boy- 
hood and Youth. 19th Edition, Square, with numerous Engravings on Wood, 8s. 6d. boards. 

contents. 

Minor Sports ; Games with Marbles; Games with Tops ; Games with Balls ; Sports of Agility 
and Speed; Sports with Toys; Miscellaneous Sports; Athletic Sports; Archery, Cricket, 
Gymnastics, Fencing ; Aquatic Recreations ; Angling, Swimming : The Fancier ; Singing 
Birds, Silkworms, Rabbits, Guinea Pigs, White Mice, Pigeons, Bantams : Scientific Recrea- 
tions; Arithmetic, Magnetism, Optics, Aerostatics, Chemistry: Games of Skill ; Draughts, 
Chess : The Conjuror ; Feats of Legerdemain, Tricks with Cards, Artificial Fireworks : 
Miscellaneous Recreations ; Deaf and Dumb Alphabet ; Paradoxes and Puzzles, The Riddler, 
Varieties. 

THE YOUNG LADIES' BOOK : 

A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits. 4th Edition, with numerous 
beautifully executed Engravings on Wood. £1. Is. elegantly bound in crimson silk, lined with 
imitation of Mechlin lace. 

CONTENTS. 

The Cabinet Council ; L' Overture ; Moral Deportment ; the Florist ; Mineralogy ; Conchology ; 
Entomology ; the Aviary ; the Toilet ; Embroidery ; the Escritoir ; Painting ; Music ; 
Dancing ; Archery ; Riding ; the Ornamental Artist ; L'Adieu. 



12 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



VI. AGRICULTURE, FARIVIIiSSS, LAND-SURVEYING, $cc. 

DESCRIPTIVE MEMOIRS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OE THE 

BREEDS of the DOMESTIC ANIMALS of the BRITISH ISLANDS. By David Low, Esq. 
F.R.S.E., Professor of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh. Imperial Quarto, Parts 
1 to 13, (to be completed in 14 parts) 21s. each. 
*** Each Part contains four beautifully coloured Plates, with a full History and Description of 
the Breeds contained in the Part. 

" A beautifully illustrated work, which should be patronised by all the farmers' clubs."— -Cuthbert W. Johnson. 

The work is divided into four distinct divisions, as follows : — 

1. The OX ; Five Parts and a Supplement, of which four are now published. This will comprise 
22 Plates. The Supplement will be contained in Part 14 of the work. 

2. The SHEEP ; Five Parts and a Supplement, comprising 21 Plates. The Supplement will be 
contained in Part 14 of the work. 

3. The HORSE ; Two Parts (published), comprising 8 Plates. 

4. The HOG ; One Part, with Supplement, comprising 5 Plates. The Supplement will be con- 
tained in Part 14 of the work. 

ELEMENTS OE PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE ; 

Comprehending the Cultivation of Plants, the Husbandry of the Domestic Animals, and the 
Economy of the Farm. By David Low, Esq. F.R.S.E., Professor of Agriculture in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. 8vo. 3d Edition, with Alterations and Additions, with above 200 Wood- 
cuts, 18s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS; 

Comprehending their Food, Treatment, Breeding, Rearing, Diseases, &c. By Professor 
Low. 1 vol. 8vo. (In the press.) 

LOUDON'S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AGRICULTURE. 

(For particulars, see page 10 of Catalogue.) 

CUTHBERT JOHNSON'S FARMER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA, 

And Dictionary of Rural Affairs. (For particulars, see page 11 of Catalogue.) 

BAYLDOFS ART OF VALUING RENTS AND TILLAGES, 

And the Tenant's Right of Entering and Quitting Farms, explained by several Specimens of 
Valuations; and Remarks on the Cultivation pursued on Soils in different Situations. 
Adapted to the Use of Landlords, Land-Agents, Appraisers, Farmers, and Tenants. 5th 
Edition, re-written and enlarged, by John Donaldson. With a Chapter on the Tithe-Com- 
mutation Rent-Charge, by a Gentleman of much experience on the Tithe Commission. 8vo. 
10s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

TREATISE ON THE VALUATION OF PROPERTY FOR 

THE POOR'S RATE ; showing the Method of Rating Lands, Buildings, Tithes, Mines, 
Woods, Navigable Rivers and Canals, and Personal Property : with an Abstract of the Poor 
Laws relating to Rates and Appeals. By J. S. Bayldon, Author of "Rents and Tillages," 
1 vol. Svo. 7s. 6d. boards. 

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY'S AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY: 

With Notes by Dr. John Davy. 6th Edition, 8vo. with 10 Plates, 16s. cloth lettered. 

CONTENTS. 

Introduction ; The General Powers of Matter which Influence Vegetation ; the Organization of 
Plants ; Soils ; Nature and Constitution of the Atmosphere, and its Influence on Vegetables ; 
Manures of Vegetable and Animal Origin ; Manures of Mineral Origin, or Fossil Manures ; 
Improvement of Lands by Burning ; Experiments on the Nutritive Qualities of different 
Grasses, &c. 

CROCKER'S ELEMENTS OF LAND SURVEYING. 

Fifth Edition, corrected throughout, and considerably improved and modernized, by T. G. 
Bunt, Land Surveyor, Bristol. To which are added, TABLES OF SIX-FIGURE LOGA- 
RITHMS, &c, superintended by Richard Farley, of the Nautical Almanac Establishment. 
1 vol. post 8vo. 12s. cloth lettered. 

%\% The work throughout is entirely revised, and much new matter has been added ; there are new chapters, containing 
very full and minute Directions relating to the modern Practice of Surveying, both with and without the aid of angular 
instruments. The method of Plotting Estates, and Casting or Computing their Areas, are described, &c. &c. The chapter 
on Levelling also is new. 

OUTLINES OF A NEW PLAN OF TILLING AND FERTILIZ- 

ING LAND. By Thomas Vaux. Svo. 6s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

By the proposed system, all poor and waste lands (comprising one moiety of the United Kingdom), on which there are 
from four to five inches of soil, may be made to yield three times as much butcher's meat and wool per acre, as the richest 
grazing lands now yield ; effected principally by manual labour, and by tilling only one-fourth of the soil at a time ; and 
by that manure only which will be produced on the spot whereon the system is brought into operation. 



PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, AND CO. 



13 



VSI. GARDEN INC. 

LOUDON'S ENCYCLOPiS)^ 

(For particulars, see page 10.) 

THE ROSE AMATEUR'S GUIDE : 

Containing' ample Descriptions of all the fine leading Varieties of Roses, regularly classed in 
their respective families ; their History and Mode of Culture. By T. Rivers, Jun. 2d Edi- 
tion, with Alterations and Additions. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered. 

Amons the additions to the present Edition will be found full Directions for Raising New Roses from Seed, by modes 
never before published, appended to each Family ; with descriptions of the most remarkable New Roses lately introduced ; 
an alphabetical list of all the New Roses and Show Flowers. 

THE VEGETABLE CULTIVATOR; 

Containing a plain and accurate Description of all the different Species of Culinary "Vegetables, 
with the most approved Method of Cultivating them by Natural and Artificial Means, and 
the best Modes of Cooking them ; alphabetically arranged. Together with a Description of 
the Physical Herbs in General Use. Also, some Recollections of the Life of Philip Miller, 
F.A.S., Gardener to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries at Chelsea. By John Rogers, 
Author of " The Fruit Cultivator." Fcp. 8vo. 7s. cloth. 

APRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE 

GRAPE VINE ON OPEN WALLS. By Clement Hoare. 3d Edition, 8vo. 7s. 6d. cloth. 

contents. 

Introduction ; Observations on the present Method of Cultivating Grape Vines on open Walls ; 
on the capability and extent of the Fruit-bearing Powers of the Vine ; on Aspect ; on Soil ; 
on Manure ; on the Construction of Walls ; on the Propagation of Vines ; on the Pruning of 
Vines; on the Training of Vines; on the Management of a Vine during the first five years of 
its growth ; Weekly Calendarial Register ; General Autumnal Prunings ; on the Winter 
Management of the Vine ; on the Planting and Management of Vines in the public thorough- 
fares of towns ; Descriptive Catalogue of twelve sorts of Grapes most suitably adapted for 
Culture on open Walls. 

PRACTICAL HINTS ON THE CULTURE OF THE PINE- 

APPLE. By R. Glendinning, Gardener to the Right Hon. Lord Rolle, Bicton. 12m0. 
with Plan of a Pinery, 5s. cloth. 

THE THEORY OF HORTICULTURE ; 

Or, an Attempt to Explain the Principal Operations of Gardening upon Physiological Prin- 
ciples. By John Lindley, Ph.D., F.R.S. 1 vol. 8vo. with Illustrations on Wood. 12s. 
cloth. 

This book is witten in the hope of providing the intelligent gardener, and the scientific amateur, correctly, with the ra- 
tionalia of the more important operations of Horticulture ; and the author has endeavoured to present to his readers an 
intelligible explanation, founded upon well ascertained facts, which they can judge of by their own means of observation, 
of the general nature of vegetable actions, and of the causes which, while they control the powers of life in plants, are 
capable of being regulated by themselves. The possession of such knowledge will necessarily teach them how to improve 
their methods of cultivation, and lead them to the discovery of new and better modes. 

AN OUTLINE OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF HORTICUL- 

TURE. By Professor Lindley. 18mo. 2s. sewed. 

A GUIDE TO THE ORCHARD AND KITCHEN GARDEN; 

Or, an Account of the most valuable Fruits and Vegetables cultivated in Great Britain : with 
Kalendars of the Work required in the Orchard and Kitchen Garden during every month in 
the year. By George Lindley, C.M.H.S. Edited by Professor Lindley. 1 large 
vol. 8vo. 16s. boards. 

THE LANDSCAPE GARDENING AND LANDSCAPE ARCHI- 

TECTURE of the late Humphry Repton, Esq.; being his entire works on these subjects. 
New Edit ; on, with an historical and scientific Introduction, a systematic Analysis, a Biogra- 
phical Notice, Notes, and a copious alphabetical Index. By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S., &c. 
Originally published in 1 folio and 3 quarto volumes, and now comprised in 1 vol. Svo. illus- 
trated by upwards of 250 Engravings, and Portrait, 30s. cloth ; with coloured plates £Z. 6s. 
cloth. 

THE SUBURBAN GARDENER AND VILLA COMPANION : 

Comprising the Choice of a Villa or Suburban Residence, or of a situation on which to form 
one ; the Arrangement and Furnishing of the House ; and the Laying-out, Planting, and 
general Management of the Garden and Grounds ; the whole adapted for grounds from one 
perch to fifty acres and upwards in extent ; intended for the instruction of those who know 
little of Gardening or Rural Affairs, and more particularly for the use of Ladies. By J. C. 
Loudon, F.L.S., &c, 1 vol. Svo. with above 300 Wood Engravings, 20s. cloth. 

A SELECTION FROM THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND H0RTI- 

CULTURAL PAPERS, published in the Transactions of the Royal and Horticultural So- 
cieties, by the late T. A. Knight, Esq,, President of the Horticultural Society of London, 
&c- To which is prefixed a Sketch of his Life. 1 vol. royal 8vo. with Portrait and 7 Plates. 
15s. cloth. 



14 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



VIU. MRS. MARCET'S WORKS. 



CONVERSATIONS ON CHEMISTRY ; 

In which the Elements of that Science are familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments. 
14th Edition, enlarged and corrected, 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. 14s. cloth. 

CONVERSATIONS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY ; 

In which the Elements of that Science are familiarly explained, and adapted to the compre- 
hension of Young Persons. 9th Edition, enlarged and corrected by the Author. In I vol. 
fcp. 8vo. with 23 Plates, 10s. 6d cloth. 

CONTENTS. 

Of the General Properties of Bodies ; the Attraction of Gravity ; the Laws of Motion ; Compound 
Motion ; the Mechanical Powers ; Astronomy ; Causes of the Earth's Motion ; the Planets ; 
the Earth; the Moon; Hydrostatics; the Mechanical Properties of Fluids; of Springs, 
Fountains, &c. ; Pneumatics ; the Mechanical Properties of Air ; on Wind and Sound ; Optics ; 
the Visual Angle and the Reflection of Mirrors ; on Refraction and Colours ; on the Structure 
of the Eye, and Optical Instruments. 

CONVERSATIONS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY; 

In which the Elements of that Science are familiarly explained. 7th Edition, revised and 
enlarged, 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 7s. 6d. cloth. 

CONTENTS. 

Introduction ; on Property ; the Division of Labour ; on Capital; on Wages and Population ; on 
the Condition of the Poor; on Value and Price ; on Income; Income from Landed Property ; 
Income from the Cultivation of Land ; Income from Capital lent ; on Money ; on Commerce ; 
on Foreign Trade ; on Expenditure and Consumption. 

CONVERSATIONS ON VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY; 

Comprehending the Elements of Botany, with their application to Agriculture. 3d Edition, 
1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with 4 Plates, 9s. cloth. 

CONTENTS. 

Introduction ; on Roots ; on Stems ; on Leaves ; on Sap ; on Cambium and the peculiar Juices 
of Plants ; on the Action of Light and Heat on Plants ; on the Naturalization of Plants ; on 
the Action of the Atmosphere on Plants; on the Action of Water on Plants ; on the Artificial 
Mode of Watering Plants ; on the Action of the Soil on Plants ; on the Propagation of Plants 
by Subdivision ; on Grafting; on the Multiplication of Plants by Seed; the Flower; on Com- 
pound Flowers ; on Fruit ; on the Seed ; on the Classification of Plants ; on Artificial Systems ; 
on the Natural System; Botanical Geography; the Influence of Culture on Vegetation ; on 
the Degeneration and Diseases of Plants ; on the Cultivation of Trees ; on the Cultivation of 
Plants which produce Fermented Liquors ; on the Cultivation of Grasses, Tuberous Roots, and 
Grain ; on Oleaginous Plants and Culinary Vegetables. 

CONVERSATIONS EOR CHILDREN ; 

On Land and Water. 2d Edition, revised and corrected, 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with coloured Maps, 
showing the comparative altitude of Mountains, 5s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

JOHN HOPKINS' NOTIONS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

3d Edition, fcp. 8vo. 4s. 6d. cloth. 

CONTENTS. 

The Rich and the Poor, a fairy tale ; Wages, a fairy tale ; the Three Giants ; Population, or the 
Old World ; Emigration, or a New World ; the Poor's Rate, or the Treacherous Friend ; 
Machinery, or Cheap Goods and Dear Goods ; Foreign Trade, or the Wedding Gown ; the 
Corn Trade, or the Price of Bread. 

*#* A smaller Edition, in 18mo. Is. 6d. sewed. 

MARY'S GRAMMAR; 

Interspersed with Stories, and intended for the Use of Children. 5th Edition, revised and 
enlarged, 18mo. 3s. 6d. half-bound. 

WILLY'S HOLIDAYS; 

Or, Conversations on Different Kinds of Governments, intended for Young Children. 18mo. 
2s. half -bound. 

CONTENTS. 

How Willy gets into Debt ; how the King has an Allowance like the School-boy ; how the King 
gets into Debt like a School-boy; a curious way to pay Debts; Difference between making 
Laws and making people obey them; on Flogging Soldiers and School-boys; on Despotic 
Sovereigns ; on Republics ; on Slavery. 

WILLY'S STORIES EOR YOUNG CHILDREN. 

Third Edition, 18mo. 2s. half-bound. 

CONTENTS. 

The House-building ; the Three Pits (the Coal Pit, the Chalk Pit, and the Gravel Pit) ; and the 
Land without Laws. 

THE SEASONS; 

Stories for very Young Children. 4 vols. 18mo. new Edition : Vol. 1, Winter ; Vol. 2, Spring ; 
Vol. 3, Summer ; Vol. 4, Autumn. 2s. each volume, half-bound. 



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15 



IX. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 



THE CABINET CYCLOPAEDIA ; 

Comprising- a Series of Original Works on History, Biography, Literature, the Sciences, Arts, 
and Manufactures. Conducted and edited by Di*. Lardner. 

The Series, complete, in One Hundred and Thirty-three Volumes, ^39. 18s. (Three volumes 
remain to be published.) The works, separate, at 6s. per volume. 

Each work is complete in itself; and ench Cabinet forms a complete body of information on its own subject. As a whole 
the Cyclopaedia includes all the usual divisions of human knowlege that are not of a technical and professional kind. The 
Sciences and Arts have been treated in a plain and familiar style, adapted to the general reader ; and the high rank in 
science held by most of the Authors in this department affords a guarantee for soundness and accuracy. Besides these 
claims on attention offered by its separate divisions, the entire series will be found very advantageous for Families resident 
in the Country, who are not possessed of a Library ; for Emigrants, and as a Cabin-Library for vessels bearing Passen- 
gers to distant Parts ; and for the Libraries of Mechanics' Institutions, Literary and Philosophical Societies, the Army and 
the Navy, and of Colonial Institutions. 

THE WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 

2d Edition, 3 vols. 8vo. with Portrait, 36s. cloth lettered. 

This collection consists of the author's contributions to the Edinburgh Review, Peter Plymley's Letters on the Catholics, 
and other miscellaneous works. 

LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OE THE CATHOLICS, 

To my Brother Abraham who lives in the Country. By Peter Plymley. 21st Edition, 
post 8vo. 7s. cloth. 

THE RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND. 

By William Howitt, New Edition, medium 8vo. with Engravings on wood, by Bewick and 
Williams, uniform with "Visits to Remarkable Places," 21s. cloth lettered. 

contents. 



Life of the Aristocracy. 
Life of the Agricultural Population. 
Picturesque and Moral Features of the Country. 
Strong Attachment of the English to Country- 
Life. 



The Forests of England. 

Habits, Amusements, and Condition of th e 
People ; in which are introduced, Two New 
Chapters, descriptive of the Rural Watering 
Places, and Education of the Rural Population. 



YISITS TO REMARKABLE PLACES- 

Old Halls, Battle-Fields, and Scenes illustrative of Striking Passages in English History and 
Poetry. By William Howitt. New Edition, medium 8vo. with 40 Illustrations by 
S. Williams. 21s. cloth lettered. 

SECOND SERIES, chiefly in the Counties of DURHAM and NORTHUMBERLAND, with a 
St roll along the BORDER. 1 vol. medium 8vo. with upwards of 40 highly -finished Woodcuts, 
from Drawings made on the spot for this work, by Messrs. Carmichael, Richardsons, and 
Weld Taylor, 21s. cloth lettered. 

THE STUDENT-LIFE OF GERMANY. 

From the Unpublished MSS. of Dr. Cornelius. By William Howitt. 8vo. with 24 Wood- 
Engravings, and Seven Steel Plates, 21s. cloth. 

This volume contains Forty of the most famous Student-Songs, with the Original Music, adapted to the Pianoforte 

by Winkelmeyer. 

COLONISATION AND CHRISTIANITY: 

A. Popular History of the Treatment of the Natives, in all their Colonies, by the Europeans. 
By William Howitt. 1 vol. post 8vo. 10s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

RAMBLING RECOLLECTIONS OF A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 

By W. H. Maxwell, Author of Stories of Waterloo, &c. &c. Post 8vo. with Portrait, and 
Illustrations by Phiz, 10s. 6d. cloth. 

MUSIC AND FRIENDS; 

Or, Pleasant Recollections of a Dillettante. By W. Gardiner. 2 vols. 8vo. with numerous 
Songs, 24s. cloth. 

THE MUSIC OF NATURE; 

Or, an attempt to prove that what is Passionate and Pleasing in the Art of Singing, 
Speaking, and Performing upon Musical Instruments, is derived from the Sound of the 
Animated World. With curious and amusing illustrations. By W. Gardiner. 8vo. 18s. 

MELODIES FROM THE MUSIC OF NATURE. 

By W. Gardiner. 8vo. 10s. cloth. 



16 



NEW WORKS PRINTED FOR LONGMAN AND CO. 



Miscellaneous Works. 



THE MABINOGION, 

From the Llyfr Coch o Hergest, or Red Book of Hergest, and other ancient Welsh MSS. : 
with an English Translation and Notes. By Lady Charlotte Guest. 

Part 1. Containing the Lady of the Fountain. Royal 8vo. with Fac-simile and Woodcuts, 8s. 

Part 2. Containing Pevedur Ab Evrawc ; a Tale of Chivalry. Royal 8vo. with Fac-simile and 
Woodcuts, 8s. 

Part 3. Containing the Arthurian Romance of Geraint, the Son of Erbin. Royal 8vo. with 

Fac-simile and Woodcuts, 8s. 
Part 4, Containing the Romance of Kilhwch and Olwen. Royal 8vo. with 4 Illustrations and 

Fac-simile, 8s. 

THE STATESMAN. 

By Henry Taylor, Esq., Author of " Philip Van Artevelde." 12mo. 6s. 6d. boards. 

LACON. 

Or, Many Things in Few Words. By the Rev. C. C. Colton. New Edition. 8vo. 12s. cloth. 

DESULTORY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS. 

By the Countess of Blessington. Second Edition. Fcp. 8vo. 4s. cloth lettered. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NECESSITY; 

Or, the Law of Consequences as applicable to Mental, Moral, and Social Science. By Charles 
Bray. 2 vols. 8vo. 15s. cloth. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MYSTERY. 

By W. C. Dendy. 1 vol. 8vo. 12s. cloth. 

FACTS IN MESMERISM, 

With Reasons for a Dispassionate Inquiry into it. By the Rev. Chauncy HareTownsend, 
A.M. late of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Post 8vo. 12s. cloth. 

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY: 

With which is incorporated much of the elementary part of the " Institutiones Physiologicae" 
of J. F. Blumenbach, Professor in the University of Gottingen. By John Elliotson, M.D. 
Cantab. F.R.S. Complete in 1 thick vol. 8vo. of upwards of 1200 pages, with numerous Wood- 
cuts, ^2. 2s. cloth ; or in three separate Parts : — 
Part 1, General Physiology, and the Organic Functions. 5th Edition, 10s. 6d. 
" 2, The Animal Functions. 5th Edition, 14s. 

" 3, Human Generation ; the Growth, Decay, and Varieties of Mankind : with an 
Appendix on Mesmerism, 17s. 

A DICTIONARY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE ; 

Containing the Accentuation, the Grammatical Inflexions, the Irregular Words referred to 
their Themes, the Parallel Terms from other Gothic Languages, the Meaning of the Anglo- 
Saxon in English and Latin, and copious English and Latin Indexes, serving as a Dictionary 
of English and Anglo-Saxon, as well as of Latin and Anglo-Saxon. With a Preface, on the 
Origin and Connection of the German Tongues, a Map of Languages, and the Essentials of 
Anglo-Saxon Grammar. By the Rev. J. Bosworth, LL.D. Dr. Phil, of Leyden, &c. Royal 
8vo. sS2. 2s. boards. 

A TREATISE ON THE VALUATION OF ANNUITIES AND 

ASSURANCES on LIVES and SURVIVORSHIPS; on the Construction of Tables of Mor- 
tality; and on the Probabilities and Expectations of Life. Wherein the Laws of Mortality 
that prevail in different parts of Europe are determined, and the Comparative Mortality of 
diffei-ent Diseases and of the Two Sexes are shown: with a variety of Tables. By Joshua 
Milne, Actuary to the Sun Life Assurance Society. 2 vols. 8vo. £\. 10s. boards. 

THE PRINCIPLES AND DOCTRINE OF ASSURANCES, 

ANNUITIES on LIVES, and CONTINGENT REVERSIONS, Stated and Explained. By W. 
Morgan, F.R.S. Actuary to the Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives, &c. 8vo. 12s. 
boards. 

AN ESSAY ON PROBABILITIES, 

And on their Application to Life Contingencies and Insurance Offices. By Aug. de Morgan, 
of Trinity College, Cambridge. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

A MANUAL FOR MECHANICS' INSTITUTIONS. 

Published under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 
Post 8vo. 5s. cloth. 



April 1842. 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



A 

LOGrUE OF NEW W 

FRINTED FOR 

LONGMAN, BROWN, AND CO. 



N° II. 

COMPRISING 

PAGES. 

1. Poetry and the Drama .18 and 19 

2. Geology and Mineralogy 19 

3. General Science 20 

4. Natural History, Zoology, Ornithology, Concho- 

logy, &c. . 21 and 22 

5. Botany , 22 to 24 

6. Religion, Theology, &c 24 and 25 

7. Architecture, Antiquities, Practical Mechanics, 

and Civil Engineering 26 and 27 

8. Works of General Utility, Popular Medical and 

Legal Works 27 to 29 

9. Commerce, Arts, and Manufactures, Political 

Economy, &c. ...... : 30 and 31 

10. Sporting, Fire-Arms, Veterinary Medicine, &c. . 31 and 32 



18 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



I. POETRY AND THE DRAMA. 

THOMAS MOORE'S POETICAL WORKS. 

First and only Complete Edition. Edited by Mr. Moore. With Autobiographical Prefaces. 
10 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Portrait, and 19 other highly-finished Plates, £2. 10s. fancy cloth 
lettered; or £4. 10s. handsomely bound in morocco, with gilt edges- 

ROBERT SOUTHEY'S POETICAL WORKS. 

First and only Complete Edition. Collected and edited by Mr. Southey. With Auto- 
biographical Prefaces. 10 Vols. fcp. 8vo. with Portrait, and 19 other highly-finished Plates, 
£2. 10s. fancy cloth lettered ; or £\, 10s. handsomely bound in morocco, with gilt edges. 
The following may be had, bound separately, in cloth lettered : — 



JOAN of ARC 1 vol. 5s. 

MADOC 1 vol. 5s. 

CURSE of KEHAMA 1 vol. 5s. 



THALABA ....lvol. 5s. 

BALLADS, &c. . , 2 vols. 10s. 

RODERICK 1 vol. 5s. 



JAMES MONTGOMERY'S POETICAL WORKS. 

New and Complete Edition. With some additional Poems, and Autobiographical Prefaces. 
Collected and Edited by Mr. Montgomery. 4 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Portrait, and Seven other 
beautifully-engraved Plates, 20s. cloth lettered ; or bound in morocco, with gilt edges, ^1. 16s. 

THE POETICAL WORKS OP LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON, 

(L. E. L.) New Edition, 4 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Illustrations by Howard, &c. 28s. cloth lettered ; 
or handsomely bound in morocco, with gilt edges, £2. 4s. 

The following may be had separately :— 

THE IMPROVISATRICE 10s. 6d. | THE GOLDEN VIOLET 10s. 6d. 

THE VENETIAN BRACELET . . 10s. 6d- | THE TROUBADOUR 10s. 6d. 

MOORE'S LALLA ROOKH. 

1 vol. medium 8vo. beautifully illustrated with 13 Engravings, finished in the highest style of 
Art, 21s. handsomely bound in cloth lettered, and gilt ; or 40s. with India Proof Plates. 

MOORE'S LALLA ROOKH. 

1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Four Engravings, from Paintings by Westall, 10s. 6d. cloth ; or 14s. 
handsomely bound in morocco, with gilt edges. 

MOORE'S IRISH MELODIES. 

Thirteenth Edition, with Engraved Title and Vignette, 10s. cloth lettered ; or 13s. Gd. hand- 
somely bound in morocco, with gilt edges. 

JOANNA BAILLIE'S NEW DRAMAS. 

3 vols. 8vo. ^1. 16s. boards. 

JOANNA BAILLIE'S PLAYS ON THE PASSIONS. 

3 vols. 8vo. £1. lis. 6d. boards. 

SELECT WORKS OF THE BRITISH POETS, 

From Chaucer to Withers. With Biographical sketches, by R. Southey, LL.D. 1 vol. 8vo. 
30s. cloth lettered ; or 31s. 6d. with gilt edges. 

SELECT WORKS OF THE BRITISH POETS, 

From Ben Jonson to Beattie. With Biographical and Critical Prefaces, by Dr. Aikin. 
1 vol. 8vo. 18s. cloth lettered ; or 20s. with gilt edges. 

"«* The peculiar feature of these two works is, that the Poems included are printed entire, without mutilation or abridg- 
ment ; care being taken that such poems only are included as are fit for the perusal of youth, or for reading aloud. 

THE FAMILY SHAKSPEARE ; 

In which nothing is added to the Original Text ; but those words and expressions are omitted 
which cannot with propriety be read aloud. By T. Bowdler, Esq. F.R.S. New Edition, 
1 large vol. 8vo. with 36 Illustrations after Smirke, &c. 30s. cloth ; or 31s. 6d. gilt edges. 
V The same work, without Illustrations, 8 vols. 8vo. £4. 14s. 6d. in boards. 

FAUSTUS : 

A Dramatic Mystery ; the Bride of Corinth ; the First Walpurgis Night. Translated from the 
German of Goethe, and illustrated with Notes, by J. Anster, LL.D. 1 vol. post 8vo. 14s. bds. 

POETRY AND PAINTING, LYRICS OF THE HEART, AND 

OTHER POEMS, by Alaric A. Watts, illustrated by a Series of Engravings from the 
most celebrated works of Modern Painters, executed in the most finished Style of Art, will be 
published at Midsummer. This work has been many years in preparation, and the Publishers 
have much pleasure in announcing that it is now nearly completed. 

MARRIAGE: 

A Comedy, in Five Acts, as performed nightly at the Haymarket Theatre, London. By Robert 
Bell, Esq. Author of " Lives of the Poets," &c. 8vo. 5s. sewed. 



PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, AND CO. 



19 



Poetry and the Drama. 

THOMSON'S SEASONS] ~~ 

Edited by Bolton Corney, Esq. This work will be illustrated with nearly Eighty Designs 
drawn on Wood, by the following Members of the Etching Club :— 

J. Bell, Sculptor, J. C. Horsier, Frank Stone, H. J. Twnsend, 

C. W. Cope, J. P. Knight, C. Stonhouse, T. Webster, A.R.A. 

Thomas Oeswick, R. Redgrave, A.R.A. F. Tayler, 

Engraved by Thomson and other eminent Engravers on Wood. 
This work will be handsomely printed in square crown 8vo. 21s. 100 will be printed on prepared 
paper, forming a most unique book, £2. 2s. 

This is the first of an illustrated series of British Authors, in square crown Svo. The object is to combine beauty of 
design with the utmost accuracy of text. 

GOLDSMITH'S DESERTED VILLAGE. 

Illustrated by the Etching Club.— The Plates of this work have been mutilated. Impressions 

of the mutilated plates may be seen at Messrs. Longman and Co.'s, Paternoster-row. 
The Edition in imperial 8vo. is all sold. A few copies printed on Half-Colombier paper, Ten 

Guineas ; and of the Proofs before Letters, Thirteen Guineas, may still be had. 
The Half-Colombier Edition may be had handsomely half-bound in morocco, with gilt edges, 

<£15s. 15s. 

MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSER0S0, 

With Illustrations by Members of the Etching Club, is in preparation. 

THE MORAL 0E FLOWERS. 

3d Edition, 1 vol. royal 8vo. with 24 beautifully-coloured Engravings, £1. 10s. half-bound. 

THE SPIRIT 0E THE WOODS. 

By the Author of " The Moral of Flowers." 2d Edition, 1 vol. royal 8vo. with 23 beautifully- 
coloured Engravings of the Forest Trees of Great Britain, £\. lis. 6d. half-bound. 



II. GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO GEOLOGY. 

Intended to convey Practical Knowledge of the Science, and comprising the most important 
recent discoveries ; with explanations of the facts and phenomena which serve to confirm or 
invalidate various Geological Theories. By Robert Bakewell. Fifth Editiou, considerably 
enlarged, 8vo. with numerous Plates and Woodcuts, 21s. cloth lettered. 

REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY 0E CORNWALL, DEVON, 

and WEST SOMERSET. By Henry T. De la Beche, F.R.S. &c, Director of the Ordnance 
Geological Survey. Published by Order of the Lords Commissioners of H.M. Treasury. 
8vo. with Maps, Woodcuts, and 12 large Pates, 14s. cloth 

FIGURES AND DESCRIPTIONS 0E THE PALEOZOIC 

FOSSILS of CORNWALL, DEVON, and WEST SOMERSET; observed in the course of the 
Ordnance Geological Survey of that District. By John Phillips, F.R.S. F.G.S., &c. 
Published by Order of the Lords Commissioners of H.M. Treasury. 8vo. with 60 Plates, 
comprising very numerous figures, 9s. cloth. 

AN ETYMOLOGICAL AND EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY 

of the Terms and Language of Geology; designed for the early Student, and those who have 
not made great progress in the Science. By G. Roberts. Fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth. 

A GUIDE TO GEOLOGY. 

By John Phillips, F.R.S. G.S., &c. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Plates, 6s. cloth. 

A TREATISE ON GEOLOGY 

By John Phillips, F.R.S. G.S., &c. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles and Woodcuts, 
12s. cloth. 

AN ELEMENTARY INTR0DUTI0N TO MINERALOGY : 

Comprising a Notice of the Characters and Elements of Minerals ; with Accounts of the Places 
and Circumstances in which they are found. By William Phillips, F.L.S. M.G.S., &c. 
4th Edition, considerably augmented by R. Allan, F.R.S.E. 8vo. numerous Cuts, 12s. cloth. 

CONVERSATIONS ON MINERALOGY. 

With Plates, engraved by Mr. and Mrs. Lowry, from Original Drawings. 3d Edition, en- 
larged. 2 vols. 12mo. 14s. cloth. 

PHYSICAL, CHEMICAL, AND GEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES 

On the Internal Heat of the Globe. By Gustav Bischoff, Ph. D. Professor of Chemistry 
in the University of Bonn. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 8ro. with Plates and Woodcuts, 10s. boards. 



20 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



III. GENERAL SCIENCE. 



BRANDED DICTIONARY OE SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND 

ART. (For particulars, see page 10 of Catalogue No. I.) 

AN INTRODUCTION TO PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY : 

By the Rev. W. Pearson. LL.D. F.R.S., &c, Rector of South Killworth, Leicestershire, and 
Treasurer to the Astronomical Society of London. 2 vols. 4to. with Plates, £1. 7s. boards. 

Vol. 1 contains Tables, recently computed, for facilitating the Reduction of Celestial observa- 
tions ; and a popular explanation of their Construction and Use. 

Vol. 2 contains Descriptions of the various Instruments that have been usefully employed in 
determining the Places of the Heavenly Podies, with an Account of the Methods of Adjusting 
and Using them. 

THE PHYSIOLOGY 0E YISION. 

By W. Mackenzie, M.D., Lecturer on the Eye in the University of Glasgow. 8vo. with 
Woodcuts, 10s. 6d. boards. 

A TREATISE ON LIGHT AND YISION. 

By the Rev. H. Lloyd, M.A., Fellow of Trin. Coll. Dublin. 8vo. 15s. boards. 

ILLUSTRATIONS 0E PRACTICAL MECHANICS. 

By the Rev. H. Moseley, M.A., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in King's 
College, London ; being the First Volume of the Illustrations of Science by the Professors of 
King's Colloge. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with numerous Woodcuts, 8s. cloth. 

ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY ; 

Including the most Recent Discoveries and Applications of the Science to Medicine and 
Pharmacy, and to the Arts. By Robert Kane, M.D. M.R.I.A., Professor of Natural 
Philosophy to the Royal Dublin Society. 1 thick volume, 8vo. with 236 Woodcits, 24s. cloth. 

A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 0E 

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. By Sir John Herschel. New Edition, 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 6s. 
cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON ASTRONOMY. 

By Sir John Herschel. New Edition. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

THE HISTORY 0E NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

From the Earliest Periods to the Present Time. By Baden Powell, M.A., Savilian Professor 
of Mathematics in the University of Oxford. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

TREATISE ON OPTICS. 

By Sir David Brewster, LL.D. F.R.S., &c. New Edition. J vol. fcp. 8vo. Vignette Title, 
and 176 Woodcuts, 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON HYDROSTATICS AND PNEUMATICS. 

By Dr. Lardner. New Edition. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON MECHANICS. 

By Captain Kater and Dr. Lardner. New Edition. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. Vignette Title, and 19 
Plates, comprising 224 distinct figures, 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM. 

By Dr. Lardner. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. 12s. (Vol. 2 is in the press.) 

A TREATISE ON ARITHMETIC. 

By D. Lardner, LL.D. F.R.S. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON GEOMETRY, 

And its Application to the Arts. By Dr. Lardner. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. Vignette Title, and 
upwards of 260 figures, 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON HEAT. 

By D. Lardner, LL.D., &c. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Woodcuts and Vignette Title, 6s. cloth. 

TREATISE ON CHEMISTRY. 

By Michael Donovan, M.R.I.A. Fourth Edition. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, 
6s. cloth lettered. 



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21 



IV. NATURAL HISTORY, ZOOLOGY, ORNITHOLOGY, 
CONCHOLOGY, See. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF 

INSECTS ; comprising- an Account of the Habits and Transformations of the different 
Families ; a Synopsis of all the British, and a Notice of the more remarkable Foreign Genera. 
By J. O. Westwood, Sec. Ent. Soc. London, F.L.S., &c. 2 vols, illustrated with above 150 
Woodcuts, comprising' about Two Thousand Five Hundred distinct Figures, ^2. 7s. cloth. 

A MANUAL OF BRITISH COLEOPTERA; 

or, BEETLES : containing- a Description of all the Species of Beetles hitherto ascertained to 
inhabit Great Britain and Ireland, &c. With a Complete Index of the Genera. By J. F. 
Stephens, F.L.S. Author of " Illustrations of Entomology." 1 vol. post 8vo. 14s. cloth. 

DR. TURTON'S MANUAL OF THE LAND AND FRESH- 

WATER SHELLS of the BRITISH ISLANDS. A New Edition, thoroughly revised and with 
considerable Additions. By John Edward Gray, Keeper of the Zoological Collection in 
the British Museum. 1 vol. post 8vo. with Woodcuts, and 12 Coloured Plates, 15s. cloth. 

CONCHOLOGIA SYSTEMATICA : 

Or, Complete System of Conchology: in which the Lepades and Molluscaare described and 
classified according- to their Natural Organization and Habits ; illustrated with 300 highly 
finished copper-plate engravings, by Messrs. Sowerby, containing- above 1500 fig-ures of Shells. 
By L. Reeve, F.L.S. &c. To be completed in 12 monthly Parts, 12s. each plain, and 21s. col'd. 

Vol. 1 is now ready, containing- the Lepades and Bivalve Mollusca, with 130 Plates, ^3. 5s. 
cloth ; with Coloured Piates, £o. 10s. cloth. 

Vol. 2, containing the "Univalve Mollusca," with 170 Plates, will be ready on Sept. 1. 

TAXIDERMY; 

Or, the Art of Collecting-, Preparing-, and Mounting- Objects of Natural History. For the 
use of Museums and Travellers. With 5 Plates, 5th Edition, 12mo. 7s. 6d. cloth. 

KIRBY AND SPENCE'S INTRODUCTION TO ENTOMOLOGY. 

New Edition, preparing for publication. 

A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY OF 

NATURAL HISTORY. By W. Swainson, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON THE NATURAL HISTORY AND 

CLASSIFICATION of ANIMALS. By W. Swainson, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered 

NATURAL HISTORY AND CLASSIFICATION OF 

QUADRUPEDS. By W. Swainson, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with vignette title and 176 
Woodcuts, 6s. cloth lettered. 

NATURAL HISTORY AND CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 

By W. Swainson, Esq. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Titles and above 300 Woodcuts, 
12s. cloth lettered. 

ANIMALS IN MENAGERIES. 

By W. Swainson, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title and numerous Woodcuts, 6s. 
cloth lettered. 

NATURAL HISTORY AND CLASSIFICATION OF FISH, 

AMPHIBIANS, and REPTILES. By W. Swainson, Esq. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. with numerous 
Woodcuts and Vignette Titles, 12s. cloth lettered. 

HISTORY AND NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF INSECTS. 

By W. Swainson, Esq., and W. E. Shuckhard, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title 
and Woodcuts, 6s. cloth lettered. 

A TREATISE ON MALACOLOGY; 

Or, the Natural Classification of Shells and Shell-fish. By W. Swainson, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 
8vo. with Vignette Title and very numerous Illustrations on Wood, 6s. cloth lettered. 



22 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



Natural History, Zoology, Ornithology, Conchology, 8c c, 

HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS. 

By W. Swainson, Esq. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette and numerous Woodcuts, 6s. cloth. 

ESSAYS ON NATURAL HISTORY, 

Chiefly Ornithology. By Charles Waterton, Esq., Author of "Wanderings in South 
America." With an Autobiography of the Author, and a view of Walton Hall. Third 
Edition, fcp. 8vo. 8s. cloth. 

THE BOOK OF NATURE. 

A Popular Illustration of the General Laws and Phenomena of Creation. By John Mason 

Good, M.D. F.R.S., &c. Third Edition, corrected, 3 vols. fcp. 8vo. 24s. cloth. 
Contents.— Vol. 1. Nature of the Material World, and the Scale of Organized and Unorganized 

Tribes that issue from it. 
Vol. 2. Nature of the Animate World ; its peculiar Powers and External Relations ; Means of 

Communicating Ideas ; Formation of Society. 
Vol. 3.— Nature of the Mind ; its General Faculties and Furniture. 

LETTERS TO A YOUNG NATURALIST, 

On the Study of Nature and Natural Theology. By J. L. Drummond, M.D., &c. Second 
Edition, 12mo. with Illustrations on Wood, 7s. 6d. boards. 

A HISTORY OE THE RARER BRITISH BIRDS. 

Intended as a Supplement to Bewick. With a complete List of Synonyms. By T. C. Eyton, 
Esq., F.L.S. Z.S. 8vo. with numerous Woodcuts, 10s. 6d. boards ; in royal 8vo. 21s. boards. 

A MONOGRAPH ON THE ANATIDiE OR DUCK TRIBE. 

By T. C. Eyton, Esq., F.L.S.Z.S. 4to. with 24 Plates (some coloured), and numerous 
Woodcuts, ^4. cloth. 

A MANUAL OP BRITISH VERTEBRATE ANIMALS; 

Or, Descriptions of all the Animals belonging to the Classes Mammalia, Aves, Reptilia, Am- 
phibia, and Pisces, which have been hitherto observed in the British Islands ; including the 
Domesticated, Naturalized, and Extirpated Species. The whole systematically arranged. 
By the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, M.A. F.L.S., &c. 1 vol. 8vo. 13s. boards. 

TRANSACTIONS OE THE ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

8vo. The last part published is Part 1 of Vol. 3, with 6 Plates, 6s. 

TRANSACTIONS OE THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF 

LONDON. 4to. The last part published is Part 5, Vol. 2, with 13 Plates, 17s. 6d. coloured, 
and 12s. plain. 

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 

8vo. The last part published is Part 8 for 1840, 6s. cloth. 

TRANSACTIONS OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 

The last part published is Part 4, vol. 18. 4to. with 9 Plates, 36s. 



V. BOTANY. 



LOUDON'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PLANTS. 

(For particulars, see page 10 of Catalogue No. I.) 

HORTUS BRITANNIC US: 

A Catalogue of all the Plants, indigenous to, cultivated in, or introduced into Britain. Edited 
by J. C. Loudon, F.L.S., &c. 3d Edition, with Supplements, £\. lis. 6d. cloth. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 

By John Lindley, Ph.D., F.R S., L.S. With 6 Copper Plates, and numerous Wood En- 
gravings. 3d Edition, with corrections and numerous additions. 18s. cloth. 

A NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY ; 

Or, a Systematic View of the Organization, Natural Affinities, and Geographical Distribution, 
of the whole Vegetable Kingdom ; together with the uses of the most important species in 
Medicine, the Arts, and Rural or Domestic Economy. By John Lindley, Ph.D., F.R.S., 
L.S., &c. 2d Edition, with numerous additions and corrections, and a complete List of 
Genera, with their synonyms. 8vo. 18s. cloth. 



PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BBOWN, AND CO. 



23 



Botany. 

FLORA MEDICA ; 

A Botanical Account of all the most important Plants used in Medicine, in different Parts of 
the World. By John Lindley, Ph.D., F.R.S., &c. 1 vol. 8vo. 18s. cloth lettered. 

SCHOOL BOTANY; 

Or, an Explanation of the Characters and Differences of the principal Natural Classes and 
Orders of Plants belonging' to the Flora of Europe, in the Botanical Classification of De 
Candolle. For the use of Students preparing- for their marticulation examination in the 
University of London, and applicable to Botanical Study in general. By John Lindley, 
Ph.D., F.R.S., &c. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with upwards of 160 Woodcuts. 6s. cloth lettered. 

A SYNOPSIS OF THE BRITISH FLORA, 

Arranged according to the Natural Orders. Containing Vasculares, or Flowering Plants. 
3d Edition, with numerous additions, corrections, and improvements. By John Lindley, 
Ph.D., F.R.S., &c. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 10s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BOTANY. 

By Sir J. E. Smith, late President of the Linnean Society. 7th Edition, corrected ; in which 
the object of Smith's " Grammar of Botany" is combined with that of the " Introduction." 
By Sir William Jackson Hooker, K.H., LL.D., &c. 1 vol. 8vo. with 36 Steel Plates, 
16s. cloth ; with Coloured Plates, £2. 12s. 6d. cloth. 

THE BRITISH FLORA; 

Comprising the Flowering Plants and the Ferns. By Sir William Jackson Hooker, K.H. 
LL.D. 8vo. 4th Edition, with Plates, containing 82 Figures, illustrative of the Grasses and 
Umbelliferous Plants, 12s. cloth ; or coloured, 16s. cloth. 

*** In this edition all the newly-discovered Species are introduced. The Linsean arrangement is followed in the body 
of the work ; but in the Appendix are given the Characters of all the Natural Orders, with a List of the Genera, referring 
to the pages where they are described. 

Vol. II. Part 1, of (he above (Cryptogamia), 8vo. 12s.— Vol. II. Part 2 (Fungi), completing 
the work, by Sir W. J. Hooker, and the Rev. M. J. Berkeley. 8vo. 12s. 

MUSC0L0GIA BRITANNICA. 

Containing the Mosses of Great Britain and Ireland, systematically arranged and described ; 
with Plates, illustrative of the character of the Genera and Species. By Sir W. J. Hooker 
and T. Taylor, M D. F.L.S., &c. 2d Edition, 8vo. enlarged, 31s. 6d. plain ; £Z. 3s. coloured. 

ICONES PLANTARUM ; 

Or, Figures, with brief Descriptive Characters and Remarks, of New and Rare Plants, selected 
from the Author's Herbarium. By Sir W. J. Hooker, K.H. LL.D. &c. 4 vols. 8vo. with 
400 Plates, j£5. 12s. cloth. 

THE ENGLISH FLORA. 

By Sir James Edward Smith, M.D. F.R.S., late President of the Linnaean Society, &c. 

6 vols. 8vo. £3. 12s. boards. 
Contents :— Vols. I. to IV. the Flowering Plants and the Ferns, £2. 8s. 
Vol. V. Part 1, 12s.— Cryptogamia ; comprising the Mosses, Hepaticae, Lichens, Characeae, 

and Algse. By Sir W. J. Hooker. 
Vol. V. Part 2, 12s.— The Fungi— completing the work, by Sir J. W. Hooker, and the Rev. 

M.J. Berkeley, F.L.S. &c. 

COMPENDIUM OF THE ENGLISH FLORA. 

2d Edition, with Additions and Corrections. By Sir W. J. Hooker. 12mo. 7s. 6d. cloth v 

THE SAME IN LATIN. 

5th Edition, 12mo. 7s. 6d. 

AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE TREES AND SHRUBS OF 

GREAT BRITAIN, Native and Foreign, Scientifically and Popularly Described; with their 
Propagation, Culture, and Uses in the Arts ; and with Figures of nearly all the Species. 
Abridged from the large Edition, and adapted for the use of Nurserymen, Gardeners, and 
Foresters. By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. In 1 very thick vol. 8vo. with upwards of 2000 engravings 
on wood, £2. 10s. cloth. 

The original work (Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum) may be had in 8 vols. 8vo. with above 
400 8vo. Plates of Trees, and upwards of 2500 Woodcuts, ^10. cloth. 

II0RTUS LIGN0SIS L0NDINENSIS; 

Or, a Catalogue of all the Ligneous Plants cultivated in the neighbourhood of London. To 
which are added their usual prices in Nurseries. By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. &c. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 



'24 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



Botany. 

THE EASTERN ARBORETUM ; 

Or, Register of Remarkable Trees, Seats, Gardens, &c. in the County of Norfolk. With 
Popular Delineations of the British Sylva. By James Grigor. Illustrated by 50 Drawings 
of Trees, etched on copper by H. Ninham. 8vo. 17s. 6d. cloth. 

FIRST STEPS TO BOTANY, 

Intended as popular Illustrations of the Science, leading to its study as a branch of general 
education. By J. L. Drummond, M.D. 4th Edit. 12mo. with numerous Woodcuts, 9s. bds. 

PICTORIAL ELORA ; 

Or, British Botany delineated, in 1500 Lithographic Drawings of all the Species of Floweiing 
Plants indigenous to Great Britain ; illustrating the descriptive works on English Botany of 
Hooker, Lindley, Smith, &c. By Miss Jackson. 8vo. 15s. cloth. 

CONVERSATIONS ON BOTANY. 

9th Edition, fcp. 8vo. with 22 Plates, 7s. 6d. cloth ; with the plates coloured, 12s. cloth. 

The object of this work is to enable children and young persons to acquire a knowledge of the vegetable productions of 
their native country, by introducing to them, in a familiar manner, the principles of the Linnsean System of Botany. For 
this purpose, the arrangement of Linna-us is briefly explained ; a native plant of each class, with a few exceptions, is exa- 
mined, and illustrated by an engraving; a short account is added of some of the principal foreign species. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF DESCRIPTIVE AND PHYSIOLOGICAL 

Botany. By J. S. Henslow, M.A. F.L.S. &c. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo. with Vignette Title, and nearly 
70 Woodcuts, 6s. cloth lettered. 



V. RELIGION, THEOLOGY, *c. 



THE GREEK TESTAMENT : 

With copious English Notes, Critical, Philological, and Explanatory. By the Rev. S. T. 
Bloomfield, D.D. F.S.A. 3d Edit, improved, 2 vols. 8vo. with a Map of Palestine, 40s. cloth. 

COLLEGE AND SCHOOL GREEK TESTAMENT; 

With English Notes. By the Rev. S. T. Bloomfield, D.D. 2d Edition, with Map, 10s. 6d. 
cloth lettered. 

GREEK & ENGLISH LEXICON TO THE NEW TESTAMENT ; 

Especially adapted to the use of Colleges, and the Higher Classes in Public Schools ; but also 
intended as a convenient Manual for Biblical Students in general. By Dr. Bloomfield. 
Fcp. 8vo. 9s. cloth lettered. 

GREEK & ENGLISH LEXICON TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

By E. Robinson, D.D. Author of "Biblical Researches." Edited, with careful revision, 
corrections, &c. by the Rev. Dr. Bloomfield. 1 vol. 8vo. 18s. cloth lettered. 

THE FAMILY EXPOSITOR ; 

Or, a Paraphrase and Version of the New Testament : with Critical Notes, and a Practical 
Improvement of each Section. By P. Doddridge, D.D. To which is prefixed, a Life of the 
Author, by A. Kippis, D.D. F.R.S. and S.A. New Edition, 4 vols. 8vo. ^1. 16s. cloth. 

THE CONTINUOUS HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 

OF ST. PAUL, on the basis of the Acts ; with Intercalary Matter of Sacred Narrative, supplied 
from the Epistles, and elucidated in occasional Dissertations : with the Horse Paulinae of Dr. 
Paley, in a more correct edition, subjoined. By James Tate, M-A. Canon Residentiary of 
St. Paul's. 8vo. with Map, 13s. cloth lettered. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ; 

Containing the Doctrines, Duties, Admonitions, and Consolations of the Christian Religion. 
By John Burns, M.D. F.R.S. 5th Edition, 12mo. 7s. bds. 

CONTENTS. 

Man is created for a Future State of Happiness ; on the Means by which a Future State of 
Happiness is procured ; of what is required of Man that he may obtain a Future State of 
Happiness ; of the Nature of the Future State of Happiness ; of the Preparation for the Future 
State of Happiness ; of Personal Duties ; of Relative Duties ; of the Duties Men owe to God ; 
of the Admonitions and Consolations afforded by the Christian Religion. 



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25 



Religion, Theology, &c. 



A COLLECTION OF HYMNS AND PSALMS, 

For Public and Private Worship. Selected and prepared by A. Kippis, D.D., Abraham 
Rees, D.D., the Rev. Thomas Jervis, and the Rev. T.Morgan. To which is added, a 
Supplement. New Edition, corrected and improved, 18mo. 5s. bound. 

THE NEW DEVOUT COMMUNICANT, 

According to the Church of England ; containing an Account of the Institution, Prayers, and 
Meditations, before and after the Administration, and a Companion at the Lord's Table. By 
the Rev. James Ford, B.D. 7th Edition, 18mo. 2s. 6d. bound in cloth, with gilt edges; 
fcp. 8vo. 3s. 6d. bound. 

PRATERS EOR FAMILIES : 

Consisting of a Form, short but comprehensive, for the Morning and Evening of everyday in 
the week. Selected by the late E. Pearson, D.D. Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. 
To which is prefixed, a Biographical Memoir of the Editor. New Edit. 18mo. 2s. 6d. cl. lett'd. 



A CENTURY OF CHRISTIAN PRAYERS, 

On FAITH, HOPE, and CHARITY ; with a Morning and Evening Devotion. 
James Ford, B.D. 3d Edition, ISmo. 4s. cloth. 

THE SUNDAY LIBRARY : 



By the Rev. 



Containing nearly One Hundred Sermons by the following eminent Divines. With Notes, &c. 
by the Rev. T. F. Dibdin, D.D. 6 vols. fcp. 8vo. with Six Portraits, 30s. cloth. 



Archbp. Lawrence 

" Seeker 
Bp. Bloomfield 

" Gray 

" Heber 

" Hobart 

" Home 

" Horsley 



Bp. Huntingford 

" Maltby 

" Mant 

" Newton 

" Porteus 

" J. B. Sumner 

" Van Mildert 
Dean Chandler 



Archdeacon Nares 
" Pott 
Dr. Blair 
" Chalmers 
" D'Oyly 
" Paley 
" Parr 

" Shuttleworth 



Professor Wliite 
Rev. Arch. Alison 
" C. Benson 
" Joshua Gilpin 
" G. Haggitt 
" Robert Hall 
" J. Hewlett 
" A. Irvine 



Rev W. Jones (of Nayland) 

" C. W. Le Bas 

" H. H. Milman 

" R. Morehead 

" Thomas Rennell 

" J. H. Spry 

" Sydney Smith 

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ORIENTAL CUSTOMS, 

Applied to the Illustration of the Sacred Scriptures. By Samuel Burder, A.M. 3d Edit, 
with additions, fcp. 8vo. 8s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

Contents. 

Houses and Tents— Marriage— Children— Servants— Food and Drink— Dress and Clothing- 
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THE SACRED HISTORY OF THE WORLD, 

Philosophically considered. By Sharon Turner, F.S.A. R.A.S.L. New Edit. 3 vols. 8vo. 42s. 

Vol. 1 considers the Creation and System of the Earth, and of its Vegetable and Animal Races 
and Materia] Laws, and Formation of Mankind. 

Vol. 2, the Divine Economy in its special Relation to Mankind, and in the Deluge, and the 
History of Human Affairs ; 

Vol. 3, the Provisions for the Perpetuation and Support of the Human Race, the Divine System 
of our Social Combinations, and the Supernatural History of the World. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE DELUGE ; 

Vindicating the Scriptural Account from the Doubts which have recently been cast upon it by 
Geological Speculations. By the Rev. L. Vernon Harcourt. 2 vols. 8vo. 36s. cloth lett'd. 

LETTERS FROM AN ABSENT GODFATHER ; 

Or, a Compendium of Religious Instruction for Young Persons. By the Rev. J. E. Riddle, 
M.A. Fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered. 

DISCOURSES ON THE PRINCIPAL POINTS OF THE 

SOCINIAN CONTROVERSY— the Unity of God, and the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead ; 
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ter, &c. By Ralph Ward law, D.D. 5th Edition, 8vo. 15s. cloth lettered. 



SERMONS, BY DR. 

8vo. 12s. 



WARDLAW. 



A SEARCH INTO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

In order to trace its claim of being the Depository of Divine Communications. By Joseph 
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THE HOLY BIBLE, 

Newly Translated from the Original Hebrew only. By J. Bellamy. 4to. Parts 1 to 8. 



26 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



VII. ARCHITECTURE, ANTIQUITIES, PRACTICAL 
MECHANICS, AND CIVIL ENGINEERING. 

TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTIO N OF CIYIL 



Engineers, 4to. 



Vol. II. with Twenty-three finely engraved Plates, in cloth, 28s. 
List of Subjects. 



Account of the Bridge over the Severn, near 

the Town of Tewkesbury, in the County of 

Gloucester, designed by Thomas Telford, and 

erected under his Superintendence. By Mr. 

W. Mackenzie, M.Inst.C.E. 
A Series of Experiments on different kinds of 

American Timber. By W. Dennison, Esq. 

Lieut. Royal Engineers. F.R.S. A.Inst. C.E. 
On the Application of Steam as a Moving 

Power, considered especially with reference 

to the economy of Atmospheric and High 

Pressure Steam. By George Holworthy 

Palmer, Esq., M.Inst.C.E. 
Description of Mr. Henry Guy's Method of 

giving a true Spherical Figure to Balls of 

Metals, Glass, Agate, or Hard Substances. 

Communicated by Bryan Donkin, Esq., V.P. 

Inst. C.E. 

On the Expansive Action of Steam in some of 

the Pumping Engines at the Cornish Mines. 

By "William Jory Henwood, Esq., F.G.S., 

Secretary of the Royal Geological Society of 

Cornwall, H. M. Assaye-Master of Tin in the 

Duchy of Cornwall. 
On the Effective Power of the High Pressure 

Expansive Condensing Engines in Use at some 

of the Cornish Mines. By Thomas Wicksteed, 

Esq., M.Inst.C.E. A Letter to the President. 
Description of the Drops used by the Stanhope 

and Tyne Railroad Company, for the Ship- 
ment of Coals at South Shields. By Thomas 

E. Harrison. Esq., M.Inst.C.E. 
On the Principle and Construction of Railways 

of Continuous Bearings. By John Reynolds, 

Esq., A.Inst.C.E. 
Wooden Bridge over the River Calder, at Mir- 

Vol. 

Vol. 3, Part 1 (4s.)— 
On Steam Boilers and Steam Engines. 

Vol. 3, Part 2 (7s. 6d.)- 
The Conclusion of Mr. Parkes' paper. I of Turf, 

On the Preparation, Properties, and Uses | Williams. 

Vol. 3, Part 3 (with Eight Plates, 12s.)— 



field, Yorkshire, designed and erected by 
William Bull, Esq., A.Inst.C.E. 
A Series of Experiments on the Strength of Cast 
Iron. By the late Francis Bramah, Esq., 
M.Inst.C.E. 
On certain Forms of Locomotive Engines. By 

Edward Woods, Esq. 
Account and Description of Youghal Bridge, 
designed by Alexander Nimmo. By John 
E. Jones, Esq., A.Inst.C.E. 
On the Evaporation of Water from Steam 
Boilers. By Josiah Parkes, Esq., M.Inst.C.E. 
Account of a Machine for Cleaning and 
Deepening small Rivers, in use on the Little 
Stour River, Kent. By Mr. W. B. Hays, 
Grad.Inst.C.E. 
Description of the Perpendicular Lifts for 
passing Boats from one Level of Canal to 
another, as erected on the Grand Western 
Canal. By James Green, Esq., M.Inst.C.E. 
On the Methods of Illuminating Lighthouses, 
with a Description of a Reciprocating Light. 
ByJ.T. Smith, Esq., Captain Madras Engi- 
neers, F.R.S. A.Inst.C.E. 
Experiments on the Flow of Water through 
Small Pipes. By W. A. Provis, Esq. M.Inst. 
C.E. 

Experiments on the Power of Men. By Joshua 

Field, Esq., V.P.Inst.C.E. F.R.G.S. 
Particulars of the Construction of the Floating 
Bridge lately established across the Hamoaze, 
between Torpoint in the County of Cornwall, 
and Devonport in Devonshire. By James M. 
Rendell, Esq., M.Inst.C.E., &c. &c. 
Appendix— Officers, Members, &c. 

III. 



By Josiah Parkes. 

and Turf Coke. By C. Wye 



"llth Oct. 1838; with Remarks on the Con- 
struction of that and other Suspension 
Bridges, in reference to the Action of Violent 
Gales of Wind. By Colonel Pasley. 
On the Supply of Water from Wells in the 
London Basin : with an Account of the 
Sinking of the Well at the Reservoir of the 
New River Company in the Hampstead 
Road. By R. W. Bylne 
Account of Gravesend Pier. By W. T. Clark, 
F.R.S. 

Vol. 3, Part 4 (with Four Plates, 10s. 6d.)— 
On ihe Action of Steam in Cornish Single I On the Locomotive Engines of the London 

Pumping Engines. By J. Parkes. and Birmingham Railway. By E. Bury. 

On Setting-out Railway Curves. By C. Bourne. | 

Vol. 3, Part 5 (with Seven Plates and Three Woodcuts— (21s.) 



An Investigation into the Power of Locomotive 
Engines, and the Effects produced by that 
Power at different Velocities. By P. Barlow, 
F.R.S. 

Description of a Sawing Machine for Cutting 
Railway Bars. By J. Glynn, F.R.S. 

On the Expansion of Arches. By G. Rennie, 
F.R.S. 

Description of the State of the Suspension 
Bridge at Montrose, after it had been ren- 
dered impassable by the hurricane of the 



An Account of the Mode of Construction 
adopted in Building a New Stone Bridge over 
the River Lea, at Stratford-le-Bow. By John 
Baldry Redman, Giad. Inst. C.E. 

Observations on the Effect produced by Wind 
on the Suspension Bridge over the Menai 
Strait, more especially as relates to the In- 
juries sustained by the Roadways during the 
Storm of January 7, 1839, together with brief 
Notices of various Suggestions for Repairing 
the Structure. By W. A. Provis, M.Inst.C.E. 

Account of the Alterations made in the Struc- 
ture of the Menai Bridge, during the Repairs, 
in consequence of the Damage it received 
from the Gale of January 7, 1839. By Thomas 
James Maude, Grad.Inst.C.E. 

Description of a Cofferdam adapted to a Hard 
Bottom, used in Excavating Rock from the 
Navigable Channel of the River Ribble ; de- 
signed for the Ribble Navigation. By David 
Stevenson, C.E., Edinburgh. 



Memoir on the Practicability of Shortening the 
Duration of Voyages by the adaption of 
Auxiliary Steam Power to Sailing Vessels. 
By Samuel Seaward, F R.S., M.Inst.C.E. 
On the Percussive or Instantaneous Action of 
Steam and other Aeriform Fluids. By Josiah 
Parkes, M.Inst.C.E. 
On the Circumstances under which Explosions 
frequently occur in Steam Boilers, and the 
" the Causes to which such Explosions may be 
assigned. By Charles Schaffhaeutl, M.D., 
Assoc. Inst. C.E. 
Remarks on the Duty of the Steam Engines em- 
ployed in the Mines of Cornwall at different 
periods. By John S. Enys, Assoc. Inst. 
C.E. 

Index to Volumes 1, 2, and 3. 
List of the Council and of the Members. 
General Titles.— Contents and Introduction to 
Volume 3. 



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27 



Architecture, Antiquities, Practical Mechanics, and Civil Engineering. 

GWILT'S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ARCHITECTURE. 

(See Page 11 of Catalogue No. I.) 

CRESrS ENCYCLOPAEDIA OE CIYIL ENGINEERING. 

(See Page 11 of Catalogue No. L) 

LOUDON'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OE COTTAGE, FARM, AND 

VILLA ARCHITECTURE. (See Page 11 of Catalogue No. I.) 

A TREATISE ON ROADS ; 

Wherein the Principles on which Roads should be made are explained and illustrated by the 
Plans, Specifications, and Contracts made use of by Thomas Telford, Esq. on the Holyhead 
Road. By the Right Hon. Sir Henry Parnell, Bart., Hon. Memb. Inst. Civ. Eng. London. 
Second Edition, greatly enlarged, with 9 large plates, £\. Is. cloth lettered. 

A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON RAILROADS, 

And INTERIOR COMMUNICATION in GENERAL. Containing numerous Experiments on 
the Powers of the Improved Locomotive Engines, and Tables of the comparative Cost of Con- 
veyance on Canals, Railways, and Turnpike Roads. By Nicholas Wood, Colliery Viewer 
Memb. Inst. Civ. Eng. &c. Third edition, very greatly enlarged, with 13 large Plates, and 
several new Woodcuts. ^6T. lis. 6d. cloth lettered. 

AN ATTEMPT TO DISCRIMINATE THE STYLES OE 

ARCHITECTURE in ENGLAND, from the Conquest to the Reformation : with a Sketch of 
the Grecian and Roman Orders, Notices of numerous British Edifices, and some Remarks on 
the Architecture of a part of France. By Thomas Rickman, F.S.A. Architect. 4th edition, 
with very considerable additions. In 1 vol. 8vo. with 15 Plates, &\. Is. cloth. 

THE MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES OE CIYIL ENGINEERING. 

By the Rev. H. Moseley, M.A., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in King's 
College, London ; Author of Illustrations of Mechanics," &c. 1 vol. 8vo. (In the Spring.) 

MECHANICS OE THE SCALE AND COMPASS. 

By the Rev. H. Moseley.— (In the Spring.) 

ILLUSTRATIONS OE PRACTICAL MECHANICS. 

By the Rev. H. Moseley, M.A. ; being the first volume of " Illustrations of Science, by the 
Professors of King's College." 2d edition, 1 vol. 8vo. with numerous Woodcuts, 8s. cloth. 

A TREATISE ON THE STEAM ENGINE, 

Historical, Practical, and Descriptive. By John Farey, Engineer. 4to. Illustrated by 
numerous Woodcuts, and 25 Copper-plates. £o. 5s. in boards. 

ANTIQUITIES OF IONIA. Published by the Society of Dilettanti. 

Part I. (imperial folio, with about forty plates, £<o. 6s.) containing — 
The Temple of Bacchus at Teos ; the Temple I Didymseus, near Miletus ; and the Temple at 
of Minerva at Priene; the Temple of Apollo | Jackly. 

Part II. (imperial folio, with about seventy plates, ^6. 6s.) containing 
Ruin near the Port of Jigina ; Temple of Jupiter 



Panellenius ; Temple of Minerva at Sunium 
Temple of Jupiter Nemaeus, near Argos; 
Temple of Ceres at Eleusis ; Arch at Mylassa ; 
Sepulchre at Mylassa ; Column of a Temple ; 
Ruins at Baffi ; Theatre at Stratonicea ; Gym- 



nasium at Ephesus ; Fragments of a Temple ; 
Theatre at Miletus; Stadium at Laodicea; 
Plan of the Great Theatre at Laodicea; 
Gymnasium at Troas; Theatre at Jassus; 
Theatre at Patara ; Theatre at Castell Rosso ; 
Theatre at Telmessus. 



Part. III. (imp. fol. with seventy-four folio Engravings and three Vignettes, 8s.) containing- 
Cnidus ; Aphrodisias ; Patara. 



VHI. WORKS OF GENERAL UTILITY, POPULAR MEDICAL 
AND LEGAL WORKS. 



THE TREASURY OE KNOWLEDGE, 

And LIBRARY of REFERENCR : containing a new and enlarged Dictionary of the English 
Language, preceded by a Compendious Grammar, Verbal Distinctions, &c. ; a new Universal 
Gazetteer; a Compendious Classical Dictionary ; a Chronological Analysis of General History ; 
a Dictionary of Law Terms, &c. &c. By Samuel Maunder. New Edition, fcp. 8vo. 8s. 6d. 
cloth ; 10s. 6d. bound, with gilt edges. 



28 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



Works of General Utility, Popular Medical and Legal Works. 

THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY TREASURY ; 

A new and popular Encyclopaedia of the Belles Lettres, &c. condensed in form, familiar in 
style, and copious in information ; embracing- an extensive range of subjects in Literature, 
Science, and Art. The whole surrounded with Marginal Notes, containing concise facts and 
appropriate observations. By Samuel Maunder. 1 thick volume, fcp. 8vo. 10s. cloth 
lettered ; 12s. bound, with gilt edges. 

THE BIOGRAPHICAL TREASURY; 

A new and complete Dictionary of Universal Biography, consisting of the Lives of Eminent 
Persons, from the Earliest Period of History to the year 1841. By Samuel Maunder. New 
Edition, with Supplement, fcp. 8vo. 8s. 6d. cloth lettered ; 10s. 6d. bound, with gilt edges. 

THE TREASURY OF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY; 

Comprising a General Introductory Outline of Universal History, Ancient and Modern, and a 
complete Series of separate Histories of every Nation that exists, or has existed, in the World ; 
developing their Rise, Progress, and Present Condition, the Moral and Social Character of 
their respective inhabitants, their Religion, Manners, and Customs ; together with the Geo- 
graphical Position and Commercial Advantages of each Country ; their Natural Productions 
and General Statistics. By Samuel Maunder.— (In the press.) 

HINTS TO MOTHERS, 

For the Management of Health during the Period of Pregnancy and in the Lying-in Room ; 
with an Exposure of Popular Errors in connection with those subjects. By Thomas Bull, 
M.D. Physician Accoucheur to the Finsbury Midwifery Institution, &c. &c. 3d Edition. 
1 vol. fcp. 8vo. 7s. cloth. 

THE MATERNAL MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN, 

In HEALTH and DISEASE. By Thomas Bull, M.D. Fcp. 8vo. 7s. cloth. 

MEDICAL NOTES AND REFLECTIONS. 

By Henry Holland, M.D. F.R.S. &c. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Physician 
Extraordinary to the Queen, and Physician in Ordinary to His Royal Highness Prince Albert. 
2d Edition, 1 vol. 8vo. 18s. cloth. 

contents. 

On Medical Evidence; on Hereditary Disease; on Bleeding in Affections of the Brain; on 
Sudorific Medicines ; Effects of Mental Attention on Bodily Organs ; on Points whers a Patient 
may judge for himself ; on the Connection of Certain Diseases ; on the Abuse of Purgative 
Medicines ; on Methods of Prescription ; on Gout and the Use of Colchicum ; on some sup- 
posed Diseases of the Spine; on the Brain as a Doitble Organ ; on some Points in the Pathology 
of the Colon ; on the Epidemic Influenzas of Late Years ; on Dreaming, Insanity, Intoxication, 
&c. ; on Mercurial Medicines ; on the Exercise of Respiration ; Method of Inquiry as to Con- 
tagion ; on the Medical Treatment of Old Age ; on the Use of Emetics ; on the Uses of 
Diluents ; on Morbid Actions of Intermittent kind ; on Diet and Disorders of Digestion ; on 
Diseases commonly occurring but Once in Life; on the Use of Opiates; on Sleep; on the 
Influence of Weather in Relation to Disease ; on Time as an Element in Mental Functions; 
on Phrenology ; on Disturbed Balance of Circulation and Metastasis of Disease; on the Use 
of Digitalis ; on Antimonial Medicines ; on the Hypothesis of Insect Life as a Cause of Disease ; 
On the Present State of Inquiry into the Nervous System. 

DISCOURSE ON THE ENLARGED AND PENDULOUS 

ABDOMEN, showing it to be a visceral affection attended with important consequences in 
the Human Economy ; with cursory Observations on Diet, Exercise, and the General Manage- 
ment of Health : for the use of the Dyspeptic. By Richard Frankum, Esq. Surgeon. 2d 
Edition, augmented, with a Dissertation on Gout, suggesting new physiological views as to its 
Cause, Prevention, and the best Course of Treatment. Fcp. 8vo. 5s. cloth. 

THE DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT OF THE SICK ROOM, 

Necessary, in Aid of Medical Treatment, for the Cure of Diseases. By Anthony Todd 
Thomson, M.D. F.L.S. &c. 1 vol. post 8vo. 10s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

The object of this work is to instruct the attendants on the sick in what way they may best assist, not supersede, the 
Physician, and has been compiled by the author, on account of his having continually observed that great ignorance pre 
vailed on the subject, and that his efforts were frequently counteracted by injudicious 'conduct in his absence. 

THE MEDICAL GUIDE, 

For the use of the Clergy, Heads of Families, Seminaries, and Junior Practiiioners in Medi- 
cine ; comprising a complete Modern Dispensatory and a Practical Treatise on the Distin- 
guishing Symptoms, Causes, Prevention, Cure and Palliation, of the Diseases incident to the 
Human Frame. By R. Reece, M.D. late Fellow of tha Royal College of Surgeons of London, 
&c. 16th Edition. 8vo. 12s. boards. 

ON RHEUMATISM IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS, 

And on the Affections of Internal Organs, more especially the Heart and Brain, to which it 
gives rise. By R. Macleod M.D. Physician to St. George's Hospital. 1 vol. 8vo. 7s. cloth. 



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Works of General Utility, Popular Medical and Legal Works. 

A DICTIONARY OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE; 

Comprising General Pathology, the Nature and Treatment of Diseases, Morbid Structm*es, 
and the Disorders especially incidental to Climates, to the Sex, and to the different Epochs of 
Life, with numerous approved Formula? of the Medicines recommended. By James Copland, 
M.D. Consulting 1 Physician to Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital ; Senior Physician to the 
Royal Infirmary for Children ; Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London ; of the 
Medical and Chirurgical Societies of London and Berlin, &c. 

This work is now in course of publication in Parts, of which seven have appeared. It contains, in an abstract and con- 
densed, yet comprehensive, form, the opinions and practice of the most experienced writers, British and Foreign, so digested 
and wrought up with the results of the Author's practice, that the Student and Youns' Practitioner will not be bewildered 
in the diversity of the opinions and facts adduced for their instruction, but be guided in the difficult path on which they 
have entered, 'and enabled, with a due exercise of their powers of observation and discrimination, to arrive at just conclu- 
sions and successful practical results. 

A POPULAR LAW DICTIONARY; 

Familiarly explaining the Terms and Nature of English Law ; adapted to the comprehension 
of persons not educated for the legal profession, and affording information peculiarly useful 
to Magistrates, Merchants, Parochial Officers, and others. By Thomas Edlyne Tomlins, 
Attorney and Solicitor. In 1 thick vol. post 8vo. 18s. cloth lettered. 

The whole work has been revised by a Barrister. 

PLAIN DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING- WILLS 

In Conformity with the Law, and particularly with reference to the Act 7 Will. 4 and 1 Vict, 
c. 26. To which is added, a clear Exposition of the Law relating to the distribution of Per- 
sonal Estate in the case of Intestacy ; with two Forms of Wills, and much useful information, 
&c. By J. C. Hudson, of the Legacy Duty Office, London. Uth Edition, corrected, with 
notes of cases judicially decided since the above Act came into operation. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
cloth lettered, with gilt edges. 

THE EXECUTOR'S GUIDE. 

By J. C. Hudson. 3d Edition, fcp. 8vo. 5s. cloth lettered. 

*** The above two works may be had in 1 volume, price 7s. cloth lettered. 

HINTS ON ETIQUETTE AND THE USAGES OE SOCIETY: 

With a Glance at Bad Habits. By Aywyos. "Manners make the man." 21st Edition, 
revised (with additions) by a Lady of Rank. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. handsomely bound in fancy 
cloth lettered, with gilt edges. 

General Observations ; Introductions— Letters of Introduction— Marriage— Dinners— Smoking ; 
Snuff— Fashion— Dress— Music— Dancing— Conversation— Advice to Tradespeople— Visiting ; 
Visiting Cards — Cards — Tattling— of General Society. 

SHORT WHIST : 

Its Rise, Progress, and Laws ; with observations to make any one a Whist Player ; containing 
also the Laws of Piquet, Cassino, Ecarte", Cribbage, Backgammon. By Major A * * * * *, 
7th Edition. To which are added, Precepts for Tyros. Ry Mrs. B * * * * *. Fcp. 8vo. 3s. 
cloth lettered, with gilt edges. 

DOMESTIC DUTIES ; 

Or, Instructions to Young Married Ladies, on the Management of their Households and the 
Regulation of their Conduct in the various Relations and Duties of Married Life. Ry Mrs. 
W. Parkes. 5th Edition, fcp. 8vo. 9s. cloth lettered. 
Social Relations— Household Concerns— the Regulation of Time— Moral and Religious Duties. 

WOMAN IN HER SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC CHARACTER. 

By Mrs. John Sandford. 6th Edition, fcp. 8vo. 6s. cloth lettered. 

Causes of Female Influence ; Value of Letters to Woman ; Importance of Religion to Woman ; 
Christianity the Source of Female Excellence ; Scripture illustrative of Female Character ; 
Female Influence on Religion ; Female Defects ; Female Romance ; Female Education ; Female 
Duties. 

FEMALE IMPROVEMENT. 

By Mrs. John Sandford. 2d Edition, fcp. 8vo. 7s. 6d. cloth lettered. 

The Formation of Female Character ; Religion, a paramount Object ; the Importance of Religious 
Knowledge; Christianity, Doctrinal and Practical ; the Employment of Time ; Study, its Mode 
and its Recommendation : Accomplishment ; Temper ; Taste ; Benevolence ; Marriage ; the 
Young Wife ; the Young Mother. 

LIYES OE ENGLISH EEMALE WORTHIES. 

By Mrs. John Sandford. Vol 1, containing the Lives of Lady Jane Grey and Mrs. Colonel 
Hutchinson, fcp. 8vo. 6s. 6d. cloth. 

PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION; 

Or, Considerations on the Course of Life. Translated from the French of Madame Necker de 
Saussure. By Miss Holland. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. 12s. cloth lettered. 



30 



CATALOGUE OF NEW WORKS 



IX. COMMERCE, ARTS AND MANUFACTURES, POLITICAL 

MCCULLOCH'S COMMERCIAL DICTIONARY. 

(For particulars, see page 10 of Catalogue No. I.) 

URE'S DICTIONARY OF ARTS, MANUFACTURES, &c. 

(For particulars, see page 11 of Catalogue No. I.) 

SAVAGE'S DICTIONARY OE PRINTING. 

(For particulars, see page 10 of Catalogue No. I.) 

STEEL'S SHIPMASTER'S ASSISTANT, 

And OWNER'S MANUAL ; containing Information necessary for persons connected with 
Mercantile Affairs ; consisting of the Regulation Acts of the Customs for the United King- 
dom, and British Possessions abroad ; Navigation Laws ; Registry Acts ; Duties of Customs 
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